--- title: "Deploy Hermes Agent on NixOS | (Just Updated) Self-Improving Agent, Memory Persists" description: "Self-improving agent on nix. Memory and skills survive redeploys. 1 GB min." category: "AI/ML" url: https://railway.com/deploy/hermes-agent-on-nixos-or-just-updated-se --- # Deploy Hermes Agent on NixOS | (Just Updated) Self-Improving Agent, Memory Persists Self-improving agent on nix. Memory and skills survive redeploys. 1 GB min. **[Deploy Hermes Agent on NixOS | (Just Updated) Self-Improving Agent, Memory Persists on Railway](https://railway.com/template/hermes-agent-on-nixos-or-just-updated-se)** - **Creator:** SuperSlowSloth - **Category:** AI/ML ## Template content ### hermes - **Image:** ghcr.io/bon5co/hermes-nixos-railway:latest - **Health check:** /api/status - **Public domain:** Yes ## Documentation # Deploy and Host Hermes Agent on Railway Hermes Agent is a self-hosted, self-improving AI agent: it keeps memory and identity across sessions, builds and refines its own skills from experience, and is reachable from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email or a web dashboard. It does real work with real tools — terminal, files, browser, MCP servers — rather than only answering questions. This template runs it on **nix**, which is the difference that matters. The agent has all of nixpkgs available at runtime: `nix run nixpkgs#ffmpeg`, `nix profile add nixpkgs#pandoc`, no image rebuild and no redeploy. A self-improving agent that can also acquire new tools mid-task improves along an axis it otherwise cannot. ## About Hosting Hermes Agent Hermes is built to run continuously — it holds channel connections, remembers across sessions, and accumulates skills. That needs persistent storage, and it needs the *right* storage: upstream puts everything under `HERMES_HOME`, which defaults to `/opt/data`. A volume mounted on the home directory would not cover that path, so config, keys, sessions, skills and memory would silently reset on every redeploy while appearing to be persisted. **This template relocates `HERMES_HOME` under the home directory** so a single volume genuinely holds the agent's identity. **Memory floor: 1 GB.** Measured: the Free plan's 0.5 GB is OOM-killed unpacking the nixpkgs channel. The dashboard idles near 113 MB here, so 1 GB leaves comfortable headroom. Browser-driving tools are not bundled in this image; upstream suggests 2–4 GB if you add them. ## Why Deploy Hermes Agent - **All of nixpkgs at runtime**, so the agent's toolbox is not fixed at build time. - **One volume holds the whole agent** — memory, skills, identity, credentials — because `HERMES_HOME` was moved to make that true. - **Auth is registered before first boot.** The template generates a dashboard password, hashes it with the project's own scrypt helper, and writes the provider config. - **Binds Railway's injected port** and ships a healthcheck path that actually answers. - **Pinned versions**, base image by digest and Hermes by release. ## Common Use Cases - A personal agent that gets better at your recurring work instead of starting fresh each time. - An always-on assistant reachable from the chat apps you already use. - A workspace for agent tasks needing arbitrary CLI tooling on demand. ## Security — your decision, made with the facts Hermes runs a terminal tool and can drive files and MCP servers. Anyone who can use the dashboard can make it act. What upstream and this template already enforce: - **A public bind cannot be unauthenticated.** With no auth provider registered, Hermes refuses to start on a non-loopback bind: *"Refusing to bind dashboard to 0.0.0.0 — the auth gate engages on non-loopback binds, but no auth providers are registered."* `--insecure` is a documented no-op since the June 2026 hardening. It cannot fail open. - **Verified on this image, 2026-08-15.** Unauthenticated requests to `/api/sessions`, `/api/config` and `/api/agent` return **401**; `/` redirects to a sign-in page. `/api/status` returns 200 without credentials by design — it is the healthcheck surface and exposes status only. - Shell commands run behind a *Dangerous Command Approval* gate unless you set `HERMES_YOLO_MODE=1`. What is yours to decide: - **The password is already out of the log.** Railway generates a unique secret per deploy and injects it as a service variable, so nothing is printed. Read it in the service's Variables tab. To rotate: change the variable, delete the `password_hash` line from `$HERMES_HOME/config.yaml`, and restart. - **Do not enable the API server casually.** `API_SERVER_ENABLED` exposes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on a second port that hands callers the agent's full toolset. It is off here. If you turn it on, set `API_SERVER_KEY` in the same change. - **Leave the approval gate alone.** `HERMES_YOLO_MODE=1` removes the confirmation step on dangerous shell commands. Convenient, and it is the guard that stops one bad instruction from being final. - **Consider dropping the public domain.** Chat channels work without inbound HTTP; if you only use Telegram or Discord, the dashboard does not need to be on the public internet at all. - **The volume is the blast radius.** Persistence is the point, and it also means anything left behind survives a redeploy. - **The LLM key is spendable.** Scope it accordingly. ## Dependencies for Hermes Agent ### Deployment Dependencies - An LLM provider key — Nous Portal, Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. - A persistent volume mounted at `/home/hermes`. - 1 GB RAM minimum (Trial or Hobby). ### Implementation Details `nixos/nix` base, digest-pinned; Hermes installed with `uv tool install` against the nix interpreter. The entrypoint generates and hashes a dashboard password if none is configured, writes the basic-auth provider into `config.yaml`, and starts the dashboard on Railway's injected `PORT`. ## Similar templates - [Chat Chat](https://railway.com/deploy/-WWW5r) — Chat Chat, your own unified chat and search to AI platform. - [stella](https://railway.com/deploy/stella) — Self-host stella with web, API, Postgres, Redis, and object storage. - [Hermes Agent | OpenClaw Alternative with Dashboard](https://railway.com/deploy/hermes-agent-or-openclaw-alternative-wit) — Self-Hosted Hermes AI Agent for Telegram, Discord & Slack Open this page in a browser: https://railway.com/deploy/hermes-agent-on-nixos-or-just-updated-se