u/Aibeginner95

I’ve been experimenting with Hermes on an M4 Mac mini (32GB RAM) and wanted to sanity check whether I’m using it properly or overcomplicating things.

Current setup:

• Local Ollama models running (Qwen, Llama etc.)
• Connected Claude + Codex accounts
• Telegram integration working
• SSH access configured
• Cron jobs for keeping models warm / available
• Local-first approach to avoid unnecessary cloud usage

Problems I’m hitting:

1. Local models (especially Qwen) can be very slow, and occasionally struggle to solve coding tasks after repeated attempts. I had Hermes delegating work to larger models, but projects still got stuck.
2. I’m not sure what experienced users actually use Hermes for day-to-day.

Should I be focusing on:

• Cron jobs?
• Kanban workflows?
• Multiple agents/roles?
• OpenRouter and broader model access?
• Long-term memory / knowledge systems?

What I’d like to build eventually:

• Financial statement / balance sheet analysis
• Equity/ research workflows
• Quant model or screening models (long-term goal)
• Large document processing → structured outputs in Sheets/Excel
• Research systems that produce better outputs than just using Claude/ChatGPT directly

At the moment I’m unsure whether I’m using Hermes correctly, or trying to force it into roles it wasn’t designed for.

For people further along: what was the first genuinely useful workflow you built with Hermes and what advice do you have for my situation?