portal-affordable

What portal-affordable does

Hermes runs side tasks on auxiliary models: describing images, compressing long sessions, naming sessions and classifying risky shell commands. With the default provider: auto, each of these runs on the main model, so an expensive main model bills every screenshot and compression at its own rate. portal-affordable pins each side task to a low-cost Nous Portal model that passed a test for that task, so switching the main model with /model for a hard turn does not change their cost.

The main model is deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-0731. Vision uses inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl with two fallbacks, compression uses the DeepSeek model at low reasoning, and the approval classifier uses openai/gpt-5-nano. Titles, skills hub, MCP dispatch and similar slots use inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash. Memory-writing tasks such as background_review stay on the main model on purpose. The profile also sets display.show_cost: true. The README explains how each model was picked and warns that prices were measured on 2026-10-02.

Key features

• Low-cost main model plus separate cheap models for vision, compression, titles and approvals
• Side-task models that keep their price when you switch the main model
• background_review, curator, kanban_decomposer and goal_judge kept on the main model
• display.show_cost enabled so spend appears in the status bar
• Copy-paste hermes config set commands to apply the auxiliary settings to your own profile
• Documented test results behind each model choice

When to use it

• Cut the cost of screenshots and session compression on a Nous Portal account
• Switch to a stronger model for one hard turn without raising side-task cost
• Apply only the auxiliary model settings to an existing profile

Who it is for: Hermes Agent users on Nous Portal who want predictable, low spend.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

It is a Hermes Agent profile installed with hermes profile install, and it changes the auxiliary model settings that Hermes documents.

How to install portal-affordable

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

hermes profile install github.com/notwitcheer/portal-affordable --alias
portal-affordable setup
portal-affordable chat

Requirements: Hermes Agent and a Nous Portal account to sign in to

Note: Its prices and test results were measured on 2026-10-02, and the README says Portal prices change.

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