DeepSeek Harness vs Hermes Agent
DeepSeek Harness (DeepSeek) and Hermes Agent (Nous Research) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
DeepSeek Harness has 9.0x the weekly package downloads of Hermes Agent (452K against 50.2K). DeepSeek Harness and Hermes Agent are close on GitHub stars (244K and 251K). Hermes Agent shipped 17 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | DeepSeek Harness | Hermes Agent |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 62 | 54 |
| Overall rank | #14 | #29 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 452K | 50.2K |
| Downloads, 7-day change | down 7.9% | up 37.3% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | — | down 39.8% |
| VS Code installs | — | — |
| Marketplace rating | — | — |
| GitHub stars | 244K | 251K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | — | 1,624 |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 51 | 25 |
| Latest stable release | — | 2026.9.24 · 12d ago |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 17 | |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | — |
| Price | Free | Free (OSS) |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| First released | August 2026 | February 2026 |
| Interfaces | — | CLI, Messaging apps, Desktop |
| Models | Any model: Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI and custom endpoints |
Trends
DeepSeek Harness
An agent harness from DeepSeek in which every capability is a plugin. Its agent reads and edits workspace files, runs commands, delegates work and keeps a plan, and it runs as a desktop app, a browser UI or the dsh command-line tool.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT); users enter their own DeepSeek API key or another OpenAI-compatible provider.
Hermes Agent
Open-source self-improving agent from Nous Research that keeps persistent memory, creates and refines skills from experience, runs scheduled automations, and works from a terminal interface or messaging apps such as Telegram, Discord, Slack and WhatsApp. It can run locally or on Docker, SSH, Modal and Daytona backends, and has a desktop app.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT); users pay their chosen model providers (Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI or custom endpoints).
Latest release 2026.9.24:
- hermes update (git installs), or re-run the installer one-liner.
- Docker / Hermes Cloud: images build from this tag (nousresearch/hermes-agent:v2026.9.24).