Deploy and Host Hermes Agent

Deploy Hermes Agent, the self-improving AI agent by Nous Research, as a secure web dashboard on Railway.

This template uses the official nousresearch/hermes-agent:v2026.7.20 image and a persistent volume so Hermes keeps its sessions, memory, skills, configuration, and workspace across deploys. It starts the equivalent of hermes dashboard --host 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT --no-open.

About Hosting

Railway runs Hermes's browser-based management dashboard on a public HTTPS domain. Railway provides durable storage for agent state and a managed restart policy.

Why Deploy

• Manage Hermes from a browser when your computer is offline.
• Preserve its learned state, sessions, skills, and workspace across restarts.
• Use Railway Variables for model-provider and messaging credentials.

Common Use Cases

• A remote browser dashboard for configuring models, API keys, skills, sessions, and cron jobs.
• A persistent personal Hermes instance with durable memory and workspace data.
• A web chat interface backed by the Hermes TUI.

Dependencies for Hermes Agent

Deployment Dependencies

• The official nousresearch/hermes-agent:v2026.7.20 Docker image.
• A Railway volume mounted at /opt/data for Hermes state.
• Credentials for a supported model provider and messaging platform.

Deploy

Create a Railway project from this template, then open its generated public domain and sign in. The required dashboard credentials are:

The template maps these variables to Hermes's documented password-auth provider and creates a stable signing secret. Configure a model provider, messaging platform, and other integrations through the dashboard after signing in.

See the Hermes web dashboard guide for dashboard capabilities and authentication details.

Persistence

The template attaches a Railway volume at /opt/data, which is the official Hermes Docker image's HERMES_HOME. Do not remove this volume unless you intentionally want to discard the agent's state.

Railway supports one volume per service and a volume-backed service must have a single replica. This template is configured accordingly.

Security

Hermes can run tools and terminal commands on the Railway service. Treat the dashboard as a sensitive administrative surface:

• Keep all provider and bot tokens in Railway Variables, never in the repository.
• Set a unique, high-entropy HERMES_DASHBOARD_PASSWORD before first use.
• The upstream project recommends OAuth or OIDC, rather than shared password authentication, for public-internet deployments.
• Review Hermes's security guidance before enabling additional tools or messaging platforms.

Updating Hermes

The image is pinned to v2026.7.20 for repeatable deployments. To upgrade, change the service source image to a newer official release tag such as nousresearch/hermes-agent:vYYYY.M.D, then redeploy. The persistent volume preserves agent state across the upgrade.

Project Files

• railway.json records the runtime settings used by the template. The start command preserves Hermes's official s6-overlay bootstrap while binding the dashboard to Railway's injected port.
• template-overview.md is a short shareable template summary.

Hermes Agent is maintained by Nous Research and distributed under the MIT License. This is an independent Railway deployment template.