Hermes Fleet

How I replaced busywork with a fleet of AI agents that runs my business

The problem

I was drowning in the work nobody wants to do. Research before calls. Proposals after calls. Content drafts. Lead follow-up. Scattered tabs everywhere. None of it is hard. All of it eats your mornings.

The shift

I stopped hiring for it and started building bots for it. Not one mega-assistant. Not a chatbot wrapper. A fleet. Each bot owns one job. Nothing more. This is the blueprint.

The Fleet

1. Lead Capture Bot

Job: Turn LinkedIn engagement into pipeline. Scans the commenters on my LinkedIn posts, qualifies them by job title, and pushes warm leads straight into my email campaigns. The keyword drops, the ICP scoring, the enrichment — handled while I sleep.

2. Pre-Deal Research Bot

Job: Walk into every call informed. One-page brief on any company before I get on a call. Their business, their pain points, their tech stack, why they might need me. No more 30-minute scramble before a discovery call.

3. Proposal Generator

Job: Turn call notes into proposals while the call is still fresh. Discovery call ends, notes go in, a polished client proposal comes out. Same day, every time.

4. Copywriter Bot

Job: Draft my content in my voice. Posts, captions, scripts — drafted before I sit down to write. I edit and ship. The blank page is gone.

5. Scout Bot

Job: Run research so I don't have to open 12 tabs. Market monitoring, competitor watch, deep dives on demand.

6. Knowledge Bot

Job: Remember everything I've ever learned. Lives in my note vault. Answers "what do I know about X" in seconds. My second brain with a search bar.

The Principles

1. One bot, one job

The single biggest mistake people make is building one bot that does everything. It fails at everything. Each bot here has a narrow, defined job. That's what makes it reliable.

2. Build on a real agent platform

These aren't scripted automations. Each bot is an agent with its own instructions, memory, skills, and tools — built on Hermes. It can reason, use the software you already use, and handle exceptions.

3. Humans stay in the loop

My bots draft. I review and approve. Nothing ships without my eyes on it. This is how you get leverage without losing control.

4. Layers on the foundation

Clay, Apollo, Instantly, whatever your stack needs — they plug in on top. The foundation handles the heavy lifting.

Build Your First Bot in Hermes (Step by Step)

Hermes is free and open source. Each bot is a "profile" — its own brain, memory, and instructions. Here's the actual setup: 1. Install Hermes Follow the guide at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs. Runs on your machine (macOS, Linux, Windows). 2. Create a profile for your bot

hermes profile create lead-capture

That's one command. It creates a dedicated space for the bot with its own instructions, memory, and session history. 3. Write its SOUL Every bot has a SOUL.md file — its job description, personality, and hard rules. This is where "one bot, one job" becomes real:

# Lead Capture Bot

You own one job: capture LinkedIn post commenters,
qualify them by job title, and push warm leads
into email campaigns.

## Hard rules
- Never message a lead directly
- Always show a dry run before pushing anywhere

Keep it short. A confused bot is a bot with a vague job description. 4. Give it tools and a model

hermes -p lead-capture config set model openai/gpt-4o

Then trim its toolset in config.yaml so it only touches what its job needs. Narrow access = reliable bot. 5. Open the Bots tab and talk to it Your bot now lives in Hermes' sidebar with its own chat. Give it a task, watch how it thinks, tighten its SOUL where it gets things wrong. 6. Repeat for the next job One bot at a time. A fleet, not a Frankenstein.

Who This Is For

Founders with packed calendars — this buys your mornings back. Marketers staring at a blank page — this drafts it in your voice before you've finished your coffee. Sales leaders — this scales without hiring.