Nous Research

Thesis

Nous Research is running two visible tracks at once. One track keeps shipping open-weight model finetunes under permissive licenses — Hermes-4 (14B/70B/36B), NousCoder-14B, and nomos-1 E1E2E3E4E5. The other track, which dominates the October 2026 evidence window, is turning Hermes Agent from a bundled product into an extensible platform: a "600-plugin catalog," a consolidated official-plugins repo, an unsupported "labs" tier, and a systematic extraction of bundled features (Spotify, Home Assistant, NVIDIA, Blender, Claude DirectSDK, and a family of memory providers) into standalone plugins P9P11P3P12P15P22P23P25P16P17P18P19. The through-line is modularization and governance of the agent's supply chain — not a single model launch.

Signal desks

Hiring

• Six roles opened on nousresearch.com/careers on 2026-06-05: UI/UX Designer, General Counsel, Full Stack Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Research Scientist, and Machine Learning Engineer E55E56E57E58E59E60.
• Product Manager, Hermes Agent (Engineering; Americas/US time zones; full-time) posted 2026-09-30 — owns the roadmap and day-to-day execution with the Co-Founder and Head of Product; the listing states 70 employees and a 2023 founding W5.
• A mobile-focused engineer hire is reported by Newsference on 2026-10-14, framed as a push into consumer-facing mobile AI W3.
• Read: a product/GTM buildout (PM, Forward Deployed, General Counsel, UI/UX, mobile) layered on a research core (Research Scientist, MLE). The only cited location signal is "Americas (US time zones)" W5E55E56E57E58E59E60.

Forks

• NVIDIA/NVIDIA-NeMo cluster: NemoClaw, Gym, Automodel, RL, Nemotron, and OpenShell — inspection of NVIDIA's agent and RL/training tooling E47E48E49E50E51E52.
• Agent frameworks/tooling: microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit, cline/cline, and harbor-framework/harbor E46E54E53.
• Audio/TTS: hexgrad/misaki, a Python G2P engine designed for Kokoro TTS models E24P20.
• Safety/research utilities: jim-plus/llm-abliteration and getitcheappro/image-size-patched E45E44.
• Pattern: a heavy NVIDIA-NeMo/NVIDIA presence plus agent-governance and TTS forks points to parallel inspection of training/RL tooling, agent safety, and speech E47E48E49E50E51E52E46E24.

Releases

• Hermes Agent release train, October 2026: v0.22.5, v0.22.4, v0.22.3, v0.22.2, v0.22.1, v0.22.0 (the "Threshold Release"), plus v0.21.x patches E6E8E9E12E13E14E15E17.
• Open-weight models on Hugging Face: Hermes-4.3-36B (36B, Apache-2.0), NousCoder-14B (14B, Apache-2.0), Hermes-4-70B (llama3), Hermes-4-14B, and nomos-1 (30B) E1E2E3E4E5.
• Memory-provider plugin releases: retaindb v1.0.1, byterover v1.0.1/v1.0.2, holographic v0.1.1 E23E22E20E21.
• MISSINGNO coding/agentic reasoning model, reported by Newsference: high token efficiency, free for a limited time on Nous Portal, usable within Hermes Agent W4.

Talking

• Third-party news is the main public voice in this pack: the MISSINGNO launch W4 and the mobile-engineer consumer push W3.
• First-party repo framing: Hermes Agent is "the agent that grows with you," with a built-in learning loop and skills-from-experience W6.
• An arXiv paper (2609.11873v3, cs.LG) on recursive self-improvement (RSI) and endogenous authority over improvement loops appears in the pack W1.
• Gap: no primary Nous blog, X, or first-party launch prose is included; the talking desk is thin and mostly secondary W3W4.

Shipping

• Hermes Agent ships at high velocity: v0.22.0 reports ~24,200 commits, ~6,080 merged PRs, ~15,600 files changed, ~7,180 issues closed, and ~2,520 contributors since v0.21.0 P9.
• A stable release pipeline now governs shipping: v0.21.6 is "the first release cut by the new stable release pipeline" (one attempt ref, tested Docker image, receipt tag) P13; updates follow tagged releases with a stable/main channel switch P10.
• Distribution surfaces span CLI/installer, Microsoft Store app/MSIX, Docker, Hermes Cloud, and desktop bundles, with signed desktop packages P9P2P4.
• The plugin ecosystem is the dominant ship artifact: a "600-plugin catalog" P9, a consolidated official-plugins repo (Home Assistant, Spotify, Claude Subscription DirectSDK) P11, and a labs repo for unsupported/experimental plugins offered as community-tier, up-for-adoption P3.
• Bundled features are being decoupled into plugins: Spotify P12, Home Assistant P15, NVIDIA App/Broadcast P22, Blender P23, Claude Subscription DirectSDK P25, Solstice model provider P6, and memory providers retaindb/byterover/holographic P16P17P18P19.
• Plugin-catalog additions in the patch window include bubblewrap, Singularity/Apptainer, mcp-serve, agent-importers, inbox, and workflow-record, while Telegram Business moves to the Hermes Labs community tier P5.

Research themes

• Agent self-improvement / RSI: Hermes is framed as "self-improving," creating skills from experience W6P9; the hermes-agent-self-evolution repo (DSPy + GEPA, "optimize skills, prompts, and code") is a separate artifact E30; an arXiv RSI paper on persistent improvement loops appears in the pack W1.
• Memory architectures: a family of providers — retaindb, byterover, holographic, hindsight, honcho, supermemory, openviking, mem0 — has been spun out with distinct retrieval designs (knowledge tree, SQLite/FTS5, knowledge graph, HRR compositional retrieval) P16P17P18P19P26P27P28E31E32E33E34E35E36E37E38.
• Model finetuning: Hermes-4 (14B/70B/36B), NousCoder (coding), and nomos-1, all tagged first-party finetunes E1E2E3E4E5.
• Voice/TTS: the misaki G2P fork targets Kokoro TTS models E24P20; Hermes added live streaming transcription and separate voice-chat model routing P13.
• Agent governance/safety: microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit fork E46; the tirith terminal-command scanning plugin P14; approval flags for credential uploads and invisible Unicode in terminal commands P13.

Hiring & scaling

• Headcount ~70, founded 2023 W5.
• Commercialization buildout: General Counsel and Forward Deployed Engineer roles (2026-06-05) signal legal/GTM maturity E56E58; the mobile engineer hire frames a consumer product push W3; UI/UX and Full Stack signal product-surface investment E55E57.
• Agent product leadership: a dedicated Product Manager for Hermes Agent (Engineering, Americas) is tasked with roadmap ownership and release coordination W5.
• Research continuity: Research Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer roles remain open E59E60.
• Location: "Americas (US time zones)" is the only location signal in the pack; no other hubs are cited W5.

Category implications

• Strategy: platformization — moving from a bundled agent to a plugin/extension platform (600-plugin catalog; official/labs/community tiers) implies an ecosystem and two-sided integration supply strategy P9P11P3.
• Infrastructure: plugin isolation (per-profile plugin host), a host-wide gateway singleton, MCP support (hermes mcp serve, MCP progress notifications), and the stable release pipeline signal investment in agent-hosting, CI/release tooling, and connector infrastructure P13P24P2P4.
• Product: consumer onboarding (guided setup chat on a free trial model), connectors, a Desktop plugin SDK wave, and a mobile push signal consumer-facing agent expansion P9P21W3W5.
• Research: memory as an active research surface (multiple provider architectures), self-improvement loops, and NVIDIA-NeMo forks indicate ongoing training/RL tooling inspection P16P17P18P19E48E49E50E51W1.
• Hiring: PM + Forward Deployed + General Counsel + mobile implies product-led commercialization; no vendor or revenue claims can be made from this pack W5E58E56W3.
• GTM: cited mechanics include free-tier guest handoff to account, Nous Portal OAuth, Microsoft Store distribution, a plugin catalog with a community tier, and multi-provider model config P2P3W2W4.

Traction highlights

• Hermes Agent v0.22.0: ~2,520 contributors, ~6,080 merged PRs, ~7,180 issues closed P9.
• Hugging Face models: Hermes-4-14B 4,742 downloads / 195 likes; Hermes-4-70B 1,691 downloads; Hermes-4.3-36B 1,612 downloads / 308 likes; NousCoder-14B 616 downloads / 229 likes; nomos-1 309 downloads / 157 likes E4E3E1E2E5.
• Repo traction: hermes-agent-self-evolution 5,558 stars E30; hermes-official-plugins 478 stars E11; hermes-labs-plugins 118 stars E7; llm-abliteration fork 167 stars E45.
• Data note: page-scrape star counts differ from event star counts (e.g., hermes-labs-plugins lists 4 vs 118 in E7; hermes-official-plugins lists 6 vs 478 in E11), suggesting scrape-timing variance across the pack P3E7P11E11.