autonovel: official Nous Research repo for Hermes Agent

Autonomous pipeline that writes, revises, typesets, illustrates and narrates a complete novel

What autonovel does

autonovel is a Python pipeline that takes a seed concept through writing, revising, typesetting, illustrating and narrating a complete novel. It follows the modify-evaluate-keep-or-discard loop of karpathy/autoresearch, applied to fiction. The repository description says it was made by Hermes Agent. In its first phase it builds the world, characters, outline, voice and canon, then drafts chapters in order, keeping a chapter only if it scores above a threshold.

Revision uses adversarial editing, a four-persona reader panel, Elo comparison of chapters and a Claude Opus review loop with a literary-critic persona and a fiction-professor persona. Export produces a LaTeX-typeset PDF, art, a print-ready cover to Lulu and KDP specifications, an ePub, audiobook scripts voiced through ElevenLabs, and a landing page. The README lists 27 scripts. The first novel, The Second Son of the House of Bells, has 19 chapters and 79,456 words, on the autonovel/bells branch.

Key features

Four-phase pipeline: foundation, first draft, revision and export
27 Python scripts, from seed.py to run_pipeline.py
Mechanical slop scoring plus an LLM judge for evaluation
Claude Opus dual-persona review loop with stopping conditions
Print-ready cover, LaTeX PDF, ePub and ElevenLabs audiobook output
Demonstrated on one 19-chapter novel kept on the autonovel/bells branch

When to use it

Generate a full-length novel draft from a seed concept
Study an automated modify-evaluate-keep loop applied to long-form writing
Produce an ePub and a print-ready cover from a finished manuscript

Who it is for: Developers and writers interested in automated long-form fiction generation.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

Published under the NousResearch organization with a description crediting Hermes Agent as its author; the README documents Python scripts driven by API keys and does not describe running them inside Hermes Agent.

How to install autonovel

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

cp .env.example .env
uv sync
uv run python seed.py
uv run python run_pipeline.py --from-scratch

Requirements: uv and API keys placed in a .env file copied from .env.example; the review loop uses Claude Opus and audiobook generation uses ElevenLabs

FAQ

What is autonovel?

autonovel is an autonomous pipeline for writing, revising, typesetting, illustrating and narrating a complete novel. It starts from a seed concept and ends with a PDF, ePub, audiobook and landing page.

Does autonovel work with Hermes Agent?

The repository description says autonovel was made by Hermes Agent. The README describes standalone Python scripts and does not document running the pipeline inside Hermes Agent.

Is autonovel free and open source?

The repository has no license file, so default copyright applies and you should check with the author before reusing the code.