Hermes in Buzz: Three Agents on Three Machines, One Shared Workspace

A fifteen-minute setup walkthrough: three Hermes agents — Bulls on a PC, Hibana on a DGX Spark, Admiral on a VPS — running in one Buzz workspace, researching, cross-checking each other's work, and collaborating through a shared project folder. The setup uses the native Hermes Gateway (recommended over the desktop ACP), requires the Buzz CLI binary on path (the single gotcha that breaks most installs), and is assisted by a dedicated skill from the presenter's buzz-skills repo. The real payoff is the closing demo: two agents research independently, one cross-checks the other's findings and corrects an error.

How to Set Up Hermes Agent in Buzz
📺 Tonbi's AI Garage ⏱️ 14:38 📅 3 August 2026 👁️ 9,058
Hermes Agent Buzz Gateway Nostr Multi-agent Skills

📌 The integration 0:00

"Now I have multiple agents working together on my project, getting their opinions, getting their work as we work on projects through a shared project folder, a shared repo that we manage together. A lot of this wasn't possible last week."

Nous Research has shipped a Buzz integration for Hermes Agent. The presenter — who published a Buzz beginner's guide the previous week — updates his setup to use it. Three Hermes agents on three different machines (a PC, a DGX Spark and a VPS), all in one Buzz workspace, communicating through DMs, cross-checking each other's research, and collaborating on a shared repository.

What checked out.
  • Hermes Agent — github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent, verified. The README describes a messaging gateway that connects to Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp and Signal — Buzz is the most recent addition.
  • His buzz-skills repo — tonbistudio/buzz-skills, 159 stars on GitHub, created 30 July 2026, pushed yesterday. Contains at least two skills: hermes-in-buzz for setup and a Buzz formatting skill.
  • Agent Wikis — agentwikis.com HTTP 200. The presenter's side project — free LLM wikis with a $9.99/month Pro tier; his disclosure is clear.

🧭 The three setup paths 2:02

PathWhat it isStatus
Desktop ACPHermes Agent in the Buzz desktop runtime — select "Hermes Agent" as the harness when creating an agentHe tried it; had difficulty. Not recommended.
Native GatewayThe recommended path. Hermes Gateway connects to Buzz as a messaging platform — full functionality including cron delivery, images, reactions, approvals, memory and session managementThe presenter's choice. "You'll be familiar with the gateway if you use Hermes on Telegram or Discord."
(Not named)Other options — GrokBuild, KimiCode, OpenCode — listed in the agent creation dropdown as available harnessesMentioned but not demonstrated
The native gateway recommendation is worth noting because it preserves Hermes' own session management, memory, cron delivery and approval system — the ACP path does not. He frames the choice in terms of what the user already knows: if you have set up Hermes on Telegram or Discord, the gateway setup for Buzz is the same pattern with a different platform name in the wizard.

⚠️ The Buzz CLI — the single gotcha 3:35

"You need the Buzz CLI binary on your path in order for this to work. If you don't have that set up, you can get your agent hooked up to it, you can message it, it'll react to you — but it'll never actually respond to you."

This is the single most important prerequisite in the entire video and he demonstrates it failing on camera. Without the Buzz CLI:

  • The gateway connects — the agent sees the message
  • The eyes appear — the read receipt confirms delivery
  • Activity shows the agent is thinking and preparing a reply
  • But the reply is never delivered. The error message is misleading: "Buzz rejected the send because the agent is not a member of the DM channel", which is false — the real cause is the missing CLI.
The error message is wrong and will send you in the wrong direction. "Sometimes the errors aren't exactly right. You can see the channels — he is allowed in the DMs." A missing CLI binary manifests as a channel-membership error. That is the gotcha that will burn the most time.

🔑 The gateway setup wizard 4:34

The setup steps are sequential, and the order matters:

  1. Create the agent in Buzz. Select "Hermes Agent" as harness. Buzz generates a Nostr private key — save it; it connects the agent identity to the gateway.
  2. Run hermes gateway setup on the machine hosting the agent. The TUI wizard opens, lists messaging platforms — Buzz is now an option alongside Telegram, Discord, etc.
  3. Configure Buzz: Paste the community relay URL, the Nostr private key from step 1, set the home channel, and restrict access by public key.
  4. Restart the gateway. The connection is live — the agent sees messages but cannot reply (see §2).
  5. Install the Buzz CLI and configure credentials. His hermes-in-buzz skill automates this — it runs a Python script for credential updates.
  6. Restart the gateway again. The agent is now fully bidirectional.
The Nostr key is shown as a crypto-wallet analogy — public key is on-chain and safe to share, private key is not. He draws the comparison explicitly: "Think of it like a crypto wallet. You have a private key and a public key. The public key is just the address everyone can see, and it's on chain." This is accurate for Nostr keypairs, and it is the right framing for a general audience.

📦 The buzz-skills repo 3:57

tonbistudio/buzz-skills — 159 ⭐ on GitHub, created 30 July 2026, pushed yesterday. Contains at least two skills: hermes-in-buzz (CLI setup, credential configuration, error handling) and one for Buzz formatting conventions. The presenter describes it as "a guide for your agent — when to use things, the errors they may run into, security rules, and how you would do it."

The skill is invoked from the Hermes TUI — the same agent you are setting up for Buzz. "I'm just going to say: I want to set up Buzz integration for this agent. Please check. This is the skill that I made." The skill runs a Python helper script that updates Buzz credentials — the CLI install alone is not sufficient; the credential update is a separate step.

He uses a skill to set up another platform's integration. The meta-layer is visible: a Hermes skill, written by a community member, invoked from the TUI, that configures the Buzz CLI and credentials for the same agent that is currently running. This is the skill mechanism doing exactly what it was designed for — capturing a multi-step, error-prone setup process and making it repeatable.

🤝 Three agents working together 11:17

AgentModelMachine
BullsHermes agentLocal PC
HibanaHermes agentDGX Spark (accessed via SSH)
AdmiralHermes agentVPS

The demo: "Hibana, can you research recent updates to Buzz and then report them to Bulls? Ask him to double check the new updates."

Hibana produces a long list of Buzz updates and posts it in the shared channel, addressing Bulls. Bulls reads it, verifies each item, and makes one correction: "NIP-MP is a merge specification, not a shift to project's implementation."

"So now they work together to do this kind of research and work together on projects. You can imagine having a setup like this — the same workspace with different agents, being able to interact with one another, ask each other to do certain things. It just unlocks certain workflows."
The correction is the signal. One agent researched, the other verified, and the verifier caught an error — a merge specification misidentified as an implementation change. That is not polite agreement. It is cross-checking that produced a substantive correction. The agents are Hermes instances running on three separate machines, communicating through Buzz as a shared relay, and the output is a collaboratively refined answer.

He also shows a Claude agent (Sonnet) in the same workspace alongside the three Hermes agents — the setup is not limited to one harness. The workspace is the shared context; the harness is per-agent.

🔍 Claims checked

ClaimResult
Nous Research shipped a Buzz integration for Hermes AgentConfirmed. The Hermes Agent README describes a messaging gateway; Buzz appears in the setup wizard as a platform option
Gateway setup wizard lists Buzz as a platformShown on screen — Buzz, Telegram, Discord all visible in the wizard
His buzz-skills repo existstonbistudio/buzz-skills — 159 ⭐, created 30 July 2026, pushed yesterday
Buzz CLI required for agents to replyDemonstrated failing on camera — agent sees the message, prepares a reply, but cannot deliver it without the CLI
Missing CLI produces misleading errorShown — error says "agent is not a member of the DM channel" when the agent is a member; the real cause is the missing CLI
Three Hermes agents on three different machinesBulls (PC), Hibana (DGX Spark), Admiral (VPS) — all shown active in the same Buzz workspace
Agents cross-check each other's researchDemonstrated — Hibana researches, Bulls verifies, Bulls catches an error: "NIP-MP is a merge specification, not a shift"
Claude agent in the same workspaceSonnet — a Claude agent — is shown alongside the three Hermes agents
Agent Wikis existsagentwikis.com HTTP 200 — free LLM wikis, Pro at $9.99/month
Desktop ACP path is less reliableHis experience; not independently tested
Method note. YouTube caption routes returned HTTP 403, so the audio was downloaded with yt-dlp and transcribed locally with Whisper large-v3-turbo — 321 segments across the full 14:38. It rendered Hermes as "Hermes" and "Heiresses", Nostr as "Nostra" and "Nostril", DGX Spark as "DJX Spark", Admiral/Hibana/Bulls as "Admiral" / "Hibana" / "Bulls" — all corrected against on-screen text and the presenter's written materials. The Hermes Agent README and the buzz-skills repository were verified via GitHub. The gateway was not configured locally — the setup steps are reported as the presenter's. Verified 5 August 2026.

💡 Key takeaways

  1. Hermes Agent has a Buzz integration, and it uses the native gateway. The same gateway that connects to Telegram and Discord now connects to Buzz — preserving memory, approvals and session management.
  2. The Buzz CLI binary is the single gotcha. Without it, the agent sees messages, prepares replies, and fails to deliver them — with a misleading error message about channel membership.
  3. The setup order is not optional. Create agent in Buzz → save the Nostr private key → hermes gateway setup → paste relay URL and key → install Buzz CLI → update credentials → restart. Skipping any step produces a silent failure.
  4. A community-contributed skill automates the CLI install. tonbistudio/buzz-skills at 159 stars contains a dedicated hermes-in-buzz skill that handles the multi-step CLI setup, credential update and error handling.
  5. Three agents on three machines, one workspace. PC, DGX Spark and VPS — all in the same Buzz community, all addressable by name.
  6. Cross-checking works — and caught an error. Bulls corrected Hibana's research: a merge specification misidentified as an implementation change. That is collaborative verification, not polite agreement.
  7. Claude agents sit alongside Hermes agents in the same workspace. The harness is per-agent; the relay is shared. Mix and match.

🔗 Resources & links

🕐 Timestamp index

0:00Three agents in one Buzz workspace
1:01Three ways to run Hermes in Buzz
2:02Desktop ACP vs native gateway — his recommendation
3:35The Buzz CLI — the #1 gotcha
3:57The buzz-skills repo and hermes-in-buzz skill
4:34Creating an agent — Nostr private key
5:48Gateway setup wizard — Buzz as a platform
8:30Missing CLI — "never respond" demo
9:15Installing Buzz CLI via hermes-in-buzz skill
10:20Admiral goes live — memory across machines
11:17Hibana researches, Bulls cross-checks — catches an error
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