---
title: "intentic vs Hermes · a self-improving assistant, and a sandbox per agent"
description: "Hermes is Nous Research's self-improving agent: MIT, self-hosted, with generated skills and memory. intentic runs coding agents in a container and a git worktree each, with a diff before anything lands."
url: "https://intentic.dev/compare/hermes/"
---

[Compare](https://intentic.dev/compare/) Personal AI assistants · a different job

# Hermes gets better at you. intentic gives every agent a machine.

Both are MIT, self-hosted and answerable from a chat app you already have. Hermes spends its effort on what an agent carries between sessions; intentic on what an agent runs inside.

> “The Agent That Grows With You” — Nous Research's self-improving agent, “the only agent with a built-in learning loop”: it creates skills from experience, improves them in use, and builds a model of you across sessions.

*Hermes · [hermes-agent.nousresearch.com](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/)*

[Get started free](https://app.intentic.dev) [See the product](https://intentic.dev/product/)

The short answer

Hermes is a general-purpose agent with a learning loop: it writes its own skills, remembers across sessions, schedules its own work, and can put its terminal on Docker, SSH or a serverless sandbox. On memory and self-improvement it does something intentic does not attempt.

intentic is narrower on purpose — software work, and everything underneath it: a container built from an image you approve, one worktree per agent, capabilities that carry your systems, and a diff before anything is yours.

## Head to head

3 of 9 rows go to Hermes — ▸ marks them

Where you agree · both are MIT and self-hosted, both run on model accounts that are yours, both hold that an agent should work on a machine you own, both can put the work in a container, both start on a schedule, and both reach you away from the desk.

| Dimension | intentic | Hermes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What it is | the machine and workplace an agent works in | a general-purpose agent that learns as it goes |
| Memory across sessions | context you author: repo instructions, skills, task lists that survive a rebuild | ▸ a learning loop: generated skills, persistent memory, a model of you |
| Where the work runs | always a Docker sandbox on hardware you own | local, Docker, SSH or a serverless sandbox, as configured |
| Isolation | one container and one git worktree per agent | isolated subagents inside a conversation |
| How you reach it | any browser over a private tunnel, phone included; Discord and Slack when invited | ▸ a CLI plus Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal and 20+ more |
| Which models | 5 native harnesses on subscriptions you already pay for, plus any ACP agent | ▸ any endpoint — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI or your own |
| Reviewing changes | a diff reader over an isolated worktree, then land or discard | git, in the terminal it ran in |
| Starts on an event | automations: cron, webhook, chat, email, CI/CD, workspace events | a natural-language cron scheduler |
| Licence | MIT throughout — sandbox, platform and CLI | MIT |

## What it comes down to

01

### What is learned, and what is written down

The learning loop is Hermes' product: skills generated from experience, memory that outlives a session, a model of you that deepens. intentic's context is authored instead — repo instructions, the skill a capability brings, task lists that survive a rebuild — on the bet that when a coding agent has it wrong you want a file to edit, not a memory to correct.

02

### Isolation is the floor, not a backend

Hermes lets the terminal choose local, Docker, SSH or a hosted sandbox. Here there is no local option: every agent works inside its container and on a worktree cut for it, and landing replays its delta onto your tree as ordinary git you can amend or revert.

Not either/or

## One machine, two jobs

Both run on hardware you own, and an intentic automation answers a webhook — so Hermes can hand the repository work down to an agent that gets a container, a worktree and a diff, then report back in whichever chat you asked from.

## Pick Hermes when

You want one agent that keeps getting better at you — writing its own skills, remembering how it solved something last month, reachable in whatever chat app you happen to be in — and your work is much broader than repositories.

Checked against [hermes-agent.nousresearch.com](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/) the week this shipped — these products move fast. Spot something out of date? [Open an issue](https://github.com/intentic/intentic/issues) and it is fixed in the next build.

[Next comparison vs cloud agents → Devin, Jules, Codex cloud: the one real either/or](https://intentic.dev/compare/cloud-agents/)

[Get started free](https://app.intentic.dev) [All comparisons](https://intentic.dev/compare/)