Nous Companion: app and UI for Hermes Agent

Always-on desktop companion for Hermes Agent with an animated portrait, lip-synced voice and quips

What Nous Companion does

Nous Companion is an always-on window that sits on your desktop and observes what Hermes Agent is doing. A layered-sprite portrait (base, eyes and mouth) is drawn with CRT effects such as scanlines and grain, and its mouth moves in time with speech from OmniVoice, Edge-TTS or another pipeline. Reactions are short in-character one-liners, and a Godmode live feed streams each reaction as text.

The window is borderless and stays on top in three sizes, with a Hermes mode overlay and a stripped-down Classic mode. Characters are separate profiles with their own expressions, voice references and personality, and they can be exported and imported as .nous-companion-character.zip bundles. The core loop runs locally, and TTS and LLM calls go through the providers you already set up in Hermes. Without Hermes installed the app still starts, but it only shows the portrait and settings and does not react to sessions.

Key features

Layered-sprite animated portrait with scanline, grain and interference effects
Lip-synced text-to-speech through OmniVoice, Edge-TTS or another pipeline
Reactive in-character quips triggered by what Hermes is doing
Weighted idle expressions with configurable rarity
Godmode live feed that streams each reaction as text
Multiple character profiles, exportable as .nous-companion-character.zip bundles

When to use it

Getting a spoken and visual signal while a long Hermes session runs in the background
Building and sharing custom character profiles with their own voice and expressions
Giving a Hermes setup a persistent desktop persona

Who it is for: Hermes Agent users who want an ambient, voiced desktop presence and are fine installing a Python-based app.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

Built around Hermes Agent: it watches Hermes sessions to trigger reactions and routes TTS and LLM calls through the providers configured in Hermes.

How to install Nous Companion

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

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/realartsbro/Nous-Companion/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
# Windows (PowerShell)
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/realartsbro/Nous-Companion/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

Requirements: Python 3.11+; Hermes Agent installed and configured for reactive quips; internet connection on first launch of the prebuilt binary

FAQ

What is Nous Companion?

Nous Companion is a borderless, always-on-top desktop window for Hermes Agent. It shows an animated portrait that reacts to your Hermes sessions with lip-synced speech and one-liners.

How do I install Nous Companion?

Run the one-command installer script for macOS and Linux or the PowerShell script for Windows. You can also download a prebuilt Windows, macOS or Linux build from the GitHub Releases page.

Does Nous Companion run without Hermes Agent?

It starts, but without Hermes it only shows the portrait and the settings interface. Reactive quips need Hermes Agent installed and configured.