How an agent organizes my week

Too many ideas for one head

I always have more ideas than time. There's the shop, the manga, the card game, and my story platform. To move all of it forward without getting lost, I've been working with Hermes since early October. It's Hermes Agent, an open-source AI agent built by Nous Research.

The setup

I rented a small server from OVH for about €5 a month. Public SSH access is closed. The server can only be reached through Tailscale, a VPN that connects only my personal devices. Hermes runs there under a dedicated account, without admin rights. That way, my computer doesn't need to stay on.

Hermes also has working rules. It isn't allowed to publish, spend money, or resume a paused project without my approval. They're only instructions. Nothing technically stops it, and I keep that in mind. The server is mine, but the conversations don't stay local. Whatever the models need to answer goes to their providers.

How I talk to it

I write to it on Telegram. As soon as I have an idea or some research to do, I send it over. It keeps the history of our conversations and a small memory about me and my preferences. Each project has its own folder with the intentions, decisions, sources, and results. It also has reusable procedures for each type of task.

Not everything I write becomes a project note. A decision is only really kept once it's recorded in the folder.

Nights, not days

I gave it a working window from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. That doesn't mean it thinks all night. Its tasks are scheduled at set times, it starts nothing new after 6:30, and it wraps up before 7. It prepares the folders while I sleep and leaves my ChatGPT and Claude quotas for the day.

The weekly plan

The plan starts with my priorities. Hermes makes a proposal and I approve it.

My platform tells stories through video. There are true stories, curiosity stories, and fiction. Kids have their own too, with fairy tales instead of fiction. Here is the current schedule.

Monday: a true story, the shop, and the card game.
Tuesday: the manga and a curiosity story.
Wednesday: the manga and a piece of fiction.
Thursday: the manga and a true story for kids.
Friday: a curiosity story for kids, the manga, and a fairy tale.

Weekends are off. On weekdays, it sends me a check-in every day. It starts by telling me whether I have anything to do, like giving an opinion or making a specific decision. Then come the proposal, the results, the limits, and what's next. I asked it to discuss things with me project by project, without flooding me with files or notifications.

What it costs

Hermes is open source and free. It uses the ChatGPT and Claude subscriptions I already had. It isn't allowed to go over them or switch to pay-as-you-go billing. On top of those subscriptions, it costs me the server, about €5 a month.

What's next

Hermes doesn't work alone. It shares the work with Claude, and I asked it what it does badly. I cover all of that in What my agent does badly, by its own account.