Pincer: app and UI for Hermes Agent

Desktop tray monitor for local AI agents, including Hermes Agent, with health charts and reports

What Pincer does

Pincer is a desktop monitoring app for local AI agents that lives in the system tray. It checks agent health and status on a polling schedule and keeps the results in a local SQLite database, so the dashboard can show KPIs, charts and response-time history. An incidents view provides a timeline and a heatmap over 24 hour and 7 day windows, and a reports view gives a per-agent uptime summary with HTML export.

Hermes is one of the supported agents, along with OpenClaw, OpenCrabs, OpenCode and custom HTTP health endpoints. A separate background daemon, pincerd, keeps collecting checks and sync data when the desktop app is closed. It runs on macOS arm64 and Linux x86_64, and its install script can register a systemd or launchd service and set an API secret and port (default 7378). The app itself runs on macOS, Windows and Linux and can be installed with Homebrew on macOS or built from source with Bun.

Key features

System tray monitoring with live agent status
Dashboards with KPIs, charts and response-time history
Incident timeline and heatmap over 24 hour and 7 day windows
Per-agent uptime reports with HTML export
Settings for polling, retention, notifications, startup and auto-update
pincerd background daemon for checks while the desktop app is closed

When to use it

Seeing at a glance whether a local Hermes or OpenClaw agent is up
Reviewing incident history and uptime per agent
Keeping health checks running on a server with pincerd when no desktop app is open

Who it is for: People who run several local AI agents, including Hermes Agent, and want health monitoring without switching between terminals and browser tabs.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

Supports Hermes Agent among other agents; the README lists Hermes with OpenClaw, OpenCrabs, OpenCode and custom HTTP health endpoints.

How to install Pincer

These commands are copied from the project's README. Check the repository for the latest steps before you run them.

git clone https://github.com/mariodian/pincer.git
cd pincer
bun install && bun run dev

Requirements: Bun v1.0+, the Electrobun 2 toolchain (downloaded on the first bun run dev), and macOS 13+, Windows 10+ or Linux (GTK3); Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS

FAQ

What is Pincer?

Pincer is a cross-platform desktop app that monitors local AI agents from the system tray. It tracks health, status history, incidents and uptime, and stores the data locally in SQLite.

Does Pincer work with Hermes Agent?

Yes. The README lists Hermes among the supported agents, together with OpenClaw, OpenCrabs, OpenCode and custom HTTP health endpoints.

How do I install Pincer?

On macOS, run brew tap mariodian/tap and then brew install --cask pincer. On any platform you can clone the repository and run bun install && bun run dev, after which Pincer appears in the system tray.