Nous Research is giving its open-source Hermes Agent a major upgrade with Bot Mode, turning what was previously a single AI agent experience into a roster of specialized AI bots that can work together.
With Bot Mode, users can create individual bots with their own roles, models, memory, skills, personalities, and profile pictures. Instead of asking one agent to handle every task, users can build specialized agents for coding, research, writing, automation, or other workflows.
The bigger shift is that these bots can communicate with one another and hand off tasks. Hermes uses a persistent Agent Inbox and @mentions to let bots coordinate work, while group chats can bring multiple agents together on the same task.
Bot Mode is now bundled into Hermes Desktop and ships by default with Hermes Agent v0.20.3. The project remains open source under the MIT license, meaning developers can inspect, modify, and build on the system.
The AI agent race is moving beyond the idea of having one assistant that does everything. Nous Research is betting on a different model: teams of specialized agents that can divide work, collaborate, and operate with their own persistent context.
That could make complex AI workflows much easier to build—without requiring users to constantly manage every step themselves.
The bigger picture: AI is increasingly moving from chatbots that answer questions to agent systems that organize work. Hermes' Bot Mode is another sign that the next generation of AI assistants may look less like a chatbot and more like a digital team.
