head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs claude-forge
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. claude-forge has 871 stars, 183 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 29,728% (259,804 vs 871 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; claude-forge is written in Shell under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, claude-forge 21%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (anthropic, claude-code), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Hermes Agent | claude-forge | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 871 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 183 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Hermes Agent if
- You weight community size — 260K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick claude-forge if
- You want the claude-forge feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and claude-forge fits your workflow better
About Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent ☤ Hermes Agent Hermes Desktop The self improving AI agent built by Nous Research. It's the only agent with a built in learning loop — it creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It's not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM. Use any model you want — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint, and many…
read the full Hermes Agent overview →
About claude-forge
⚡ New here? Walk through setup in 60 seconds → English · 한국어 · 中文 · setup guide in 13 languages oh my zsh for Claude Code — one install, full professional kit What is it? • Why bother? • Install • What's inside • How to use • Architecture • FAQ • 한국어 v4.3.0 (September 2026, latest) — session time report now reads Codex too. Same hook, same report; it detects whether a transcript is a Claude Code transcript or a Codex rollout log and counts either. Wiring for Codex is two entries you add to /.codex/hooks.json (how). v4.2.0 (September 2026) — Adds session time report (22nd hook)…
read the full claude-forge overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or claude-forge more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and claude-forge has 871. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and claude-forge free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and claude-forge under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and claude-forge?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and claude-forge in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Hermes Agent or claude-forge?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose claude-forge if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.