Hermes Agent on Raspberry Pi 5: Portable Self-Hosted AI Agent | IT HomeLab

In the previous guide, I showed you how to run Hermes Agent on an Ubuntu VM in Proxmox. Now let’s go smaller: we’re going to squeeze the same autonomous AI agent onto a Raspberry Pi 5 — a tiny, low-power ARM board with just 4 cores and 8GB of RAM. If you’re wondering whether a Raspberry Pi can realistically run an autonomous AI agent, the answer is yes. And it opens up genuinely interesting possibilities: a portable Hermes setup that can run on a battery, fit in your backpack, or even plug into an iPad via USB gadget mode.

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🎥 Watch the Video Tutorial

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💡 Why Hermes on a Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi 5 is a capable ARM processor — more than capable enough for many workloads, including Hermes Agent. Unlike a typical chatbot that just responds to messages, Hermes is an autonomous agent. It can browse the web, execute commands, schedule tasks, and maintain persistent memory across conversations. The Proxmox setup requires a virtual machine with its own OS overhead. A Raspberry Pi is lean by comparison — Raspberry Pi OS Lite boots headless with minimal footprint, leaving more resources for Hermes itself. You’re trading some computational power for portability, but for many use cases, the trade makes sense. This guide uses the same Nous Portal free tier for the underlying model — no local LLM, no GPU, no subscription. Hermes routes requests through the Nous Portal, and you control it from your phone via Telegram.

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🛠 What You’ll Need

• A Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB RAM recommended; 4GB may work but will be tight)
• Raspberry Pi OS Lite — flashed to an SD card or NVMe drive
• Raspberry Pi Imager — to flash the OS image
• Hermes Agent (Nous Research) — free, open source
• A Nous Portal account for free-tier model access
• A Telegram account and the Telegram app on your phone
• A 128GB microSD card or NVMe drive (NVMe gives better performance)

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📋 Step-by-Step Setup

1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite with SSH pre-configured

Use Raspberry Pi Imager to flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite to your SD card or NVMe drive. Before writing:

• Choose Raspberry Pi 5 as the device
• Choose Raspberry Pi OS (other) → Raspberry Pi OS Lite — the headless variant with no desktop environment
• Click the gear icon to configure advanced options:
  • Set hostname to something meaningful like hermes-pi
  • Enable SSH and set a password (or add your public key)
  • Set your username (default is pi)
  • Configure wireless LAN if needed (though wired Ethernet is more stable)
• Write to the SD card/NVMe and wait for completion

2. Boot and SSH in

Boot the Pi and wait for it to come up on the network. Find its IP address (check your router, or use arp-scan on Linux, or look at your DHCP leases). SSH in: You’re now logged into your headless Pi.

3. Run a full system update

Before installing anything, bring the system up to date: This takes a few minutes. Let it finish.

4. Install Hermes Agent

Download and run the Hermes Agent installer. Go to the Hermes Agent website and copy the install command for Linux. Paste it into your SSH session: The installer walks you through a setup wizard — answer each prompt as it appears.

5. Run through the setup wizard

Key prompts in the Hermes setup wizard:

• Model provider: Select Nous Portal for free-tier access
• API key: Paste your Nous Portal credentials (get this from your Nous Portal account)
• Messaging app: Select Telegram
• Telegram bot token: You’ll need this from BotFather (see step 6)
• Local storage paths: Accept defaults or customize if needed
• Start the service: Say yes to start Hermes immediately after setup

6. Create a Telegram bot with BotFather

Hermes connects to Telegram through a dedicated bot. To create one:

• Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
• Send /newbot and follow the prompts
• Give your bot a name (e.g., Hermes Pi Agent) and a unique username ending in _bot (e.g., hermes_pi_bot)
• BotFather returns a bot token — copy this immediately
• Paste the token into the Hermes setup wizard when prompted, or into the config file if you’ve already completed the wizard

7. Restrict bot access to your Telegram user ID

By default, your bot will respond to anyone who messages it. Since Hermes can run commands and browse the web, restrict access to yourself — and anyone else you explicitly trust:

• On Telegram, message @userinfobot — it replies with your numeric user ID
• Add this user ID to Hermes’ allowed users list in the configuration file or via the dashboard

8. Test: Chat with your agent over Telegram

Open Telegram and message your bot. Type something like: Hermes will respond with details about the Pi — confirming it’s actually running on your Raspberry Pi 5, not a VM. You’ll notice it’s slightly slower than the Ubuntu version (the Pi has less computational power), but still responsive.

9. Explore the Hermes dashboard

Hermes includes a web dashboard for monitoring, logs, and configuration. Find the IP of your Pi and access: (The port is printed in the Hermes startup output — usually something like 9119.) From the dashboard, you can:

• Review agent activity and logs
• Create scheduled tasks that run automatically
• Manage skills (capabilities like web browsing, command execution)
• View and edit persistent memory

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🚀 Next: Portable Setups

Now that Hermes is running on a Pi, you can take it further:

• USB Gadget Mode: Configure the Pi as a USB Ethernet adapter and plug it directly into your iPad or laptop — Hermes on the go. See my Pi USB Gadget Mode video for the setup.
• Battery Power: Add a power bank and run Hermes untethered.
• Scheduled Tasks: Set up recurring workflows — backup jobs, monitoring tasks, anything you can script.
• Web Browsing: Hermes can search the web and gather information autonomously.

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✅Conclusion

You now have a self-hosted autonomous AI agent running on a Raspberry Pi 5 — completely portable, powered by a free Nous Portal model, and controlled from your phone via Telegram. It’s lean, it’s capable, and it opens the door to genuinely interesting projects like portable lab setups or edge AI workloads. Compared to the Proxmox VM approach, the Pi trades some computational power for portability and simplicity. For many use cases — monitoring, automation, web research, scheduled tasks — the trade makes perfect sense.

Previous guide: Hermes Agent on Proxmox: Self-Hosted AI Agent with Telegram Control

📺 Watch the full video guide:IT HomeLab Online on YouTube

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