The Best Hermes Agent Plugins In 2026: My Ranked Top 10, Then The Models That Run Them Best

The best Hermes Agent plugins in 2026 start with Hermes Newswire, which is my number one pick because it is free and needs no API keys and no model tokens.

Hermes Tailscale is my second pick for reaching Hermes from any device, and Hermes Speech is my third for giving your agent a voice.

Hermes Agent is the free, open-source AI agent from Nous Research, and a plugin is a free add-on that gives it a new screen, channel, voice or tool.

Plugins solve the old problem of extending Hermes by hand, which used to mean cloning repos and editing config files in the terminal.

I will give you the ranked list first, then how each plugin works and how to install it, then the safety check, and only then the models that handle a plugin stack best.

The top three Hermes Agent plugins at a glance

• 🥇 Hermes Newswire is the best first plugin, because it adds a live news ticker with no keys, no tools and no token cost.
• 🥈 Hermes Tailscale is the best plugin for reach, because it puts every machine on your tailnet inside Hermes Desktop.
• 🥉 Hermes Speech is the best voice plugin, because it is the most-starred one in the Voice category at 199 stars.

How I ranked the best Hermes Agent plugins

This ranking is my own first-person pick list, based on the plugins I showed in my video and the ones I run myself.

GoldieBench does not score plugins, so nothing in the plugin ranking is a benchmark number.

I ranked each plugin on four things.

The first is whether it does a job most people have every week.

The second is how much risk it adds, which means keys, tools and where your data goes.

The third is the star count, version and last update on its official catalog page.

The fourth is how easy it is to install and remove.

I read every star count and version below from the official Plugin Catalog on 10 October 2026.

The 10 best Hermes Agent plugins, ranked

"Not tagged" means the listing did not show a version number when I checked.

How each Hermes Agent plugin works

1. Hermes Newswire

Hermes Newswire is a breaking-news ticker for Hermes Desktop.

It scrolls headlines from the RSS, Atom and JSON feeds you choose, and it adds a Newswire page where you manage sources.

The listing says it needs zero API keys and zero model tokens, and it is the plugin I have installed and enabled on my own machine.

2. Hermes Tailscale

Hermes Tailscale puts the machines on your Tailscale network on a page in Hermes Desktop.

You can see who is online, copy an address, open SSH, send a file and publish this Hermes to your private network.

The README says it uses the Tailscale CLI you already have, with no admin API token and no cloud round trip.

3. Hermes Speech

Hermes Speech adds text-to-speech and speech-to-text through a service called AllModels.

It includes voice search and previews, and it needs Hermes Agent 0.20.0 or later.

4. Claude Subscription DirectSDK

This is an official Nous Research plugin that runs Hermes on a Claude Pro or Max subscription through the official Claude Code CLI.

The listing says there is no separate API key and no per-token bill, and it labels the plugin experimental.

5. Hermes Office

Hermes Office gives your Bot Mode agents a shared office in Hermes Desktop.

You pick a bot by its nameplate, type a task and press Send, and the task goes into that bot's own chat.

6. Web Search Plus

Web Search Plus puts several search services behind one plugin and adds clean page reading.

It can try another search service when one fails, and it works with just one provider configured.

7. Job Search

Job Search finds job postings and judges them against preferences you write in plain English.

It explains why each role is a strong, moderate or weak match, and it can run on a schedule.

8. Hermes Memory Wiki

Hermes Memory Wiki is an official plugin that turns your local session history into subject pages and daily logs.

It also shows a read-only panel of the memory your agent carries into every session, and the README says it makes no model calls.

9. WhatsApp Agent Platform

This community plugin connects a WhatsApp Agent to Hermes through Meta's WhatsApp Agent Platform API.

The README says it is not affiliated with Meta or Nous Research, and that only the agent's creator can chat during the current beta.

10. Minecraft Gateway

The Minecraft gateway puts a bot on a Minecraft server and relays chat between players and your Hermes agent.

It needs Node.js 22 or newer and a server to join, and I rank it as the fun pick.

How to install a Hermes Agent plugin

There are two routes, and both take about a minute.

The one-click route starts on the plugin's page in the official Plugin Catalog.

You read the README, click the "Open in Hermes Desktop" button, check the GitHub repository in the install dialog, choose a profile and click Install.

The terminal route is one command, such as hermes plugins install hermes-newswire.

I confirmed those commands with hermes plugins --help on my own install.

I keep one Hermes profile per model, so I install a new plugin into a test profile first.

Voice and search: pick one of each

In the video I said to install only one voice plugin and to pick the one with the most stars.

I showed Brave Search and Ollama Cloud web search in the video, and they are good small plugins if you already have the key.

The safety check before you install any plugin

This is the one thing I asked everyone to check in the video.

When I counted on 10 October 2026, the catalog had 532 plugin pages, and only 10 of them were official plugins from Nous Research.

The rest are community plugins written by independent developers, so a plugin could do things you do not want.

You should read the GitHub repository and the README before you install anything.

You should also read the "Disclosure" line on the listing, because many authors state what the plugin reads or runs.

The installer runs a security scan as well.

A plugin with a "dangerous" verdict can never be installed, and a "caution" verdict asks you to confirm in the terminal.

Tips and limits: don't install everything

Hundreds of free plugins is a trap if you install forty of them on day one.

Every plugin is more for Hermes to load, and every plugin that adds tools gives your model more to choose from.

The star count appears to be the GitHub repository's stars, so a plugin inside a big project's repo, such as Mem0 at 67k, shows that project's number.

That means you should compare stars inside one category and not sort the whole catalog by stars.

A version like 0.0.6 or 0.2.0 tells you a plugin is still early, so expect changes.

I would start with Newswire, Tailscale and one voice plugin, and add more only when a real job needs them.

Do Hermes Agent plugins come with their own model?

No, they do not, because a plugin adds a screen, a channel or a tool, and Hermes Agent runs on whichever model you connect to it.

One plugin on my list changes how you reach a model, which is Claude Subscription DirectSDK, but the model is still Claude and not something the plugin ships.

This is where GoldieBench becomes useful, because the model is the part that decides when to call each new tool.

I want to be straight about what the board measures.

GoldieBench gives every model the same one-shot prompt to build a game, a page, a simulation or a visual, then scores the rendered result from 0 to 10.

It does not run a dedicated tool-calling test, and it does not score plugins.

So the numbers below tell you how capable a model is at hard multi-step work, which I use as a guide and not as a plugin benchmark.

How many tools each plugin adds to your model

The plugins on my list are very different in how much they ask of the model.

That table is why I tell people to start with Newswire, because it adds nothing to the model's workload.

It is also why a big tool-heavy plugin deserves a stronger model than a ticker does.

The models I would run a Hermes plugin stack on

Those averages match the live model pages on 10 October 2026.

For a light stack of Newswire, Tailscale and one voice plugin, almost any model on that table will do.

For Web Search Plus, Bot Forge or Unbrowse, I would move up to one of the top four.

If you want the full model ranking, read my post on the best LLMs for Hermes Agent, and the best local model for Hermes Agent covers the offline lane.

The catalog itself is covered in my Hermes Agent plugins marketplace guide, and the sibling lists are the best Hermes Agent skills and the best Hermes Agent tools.

How I test a new plugin against my model

First, I install the plugin into a spare profile, so my main setup stays untouched.

Second, I run hermes plugins info to see whether it adds tools, hooks or environment variables.

Third, I give the agent three jobs that should use the new tool and three jobs that should not.

Fourth, I watch whether the model calls the tool at the right moments and leaves it alone the rest of the time.

Fifth, I swap the profile to a cheaper model and run the same six jobs again.

If the cheaper model handles the plugin cleanly, I keep it there and save money.

If it starts calling tools at random, I move that plugin's work back up to a stronger model from the table.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe operator install walkthrough for all ten Hermes plugins
• AI Income Deskwhich Hermes plugins suit agencies, creators and business owners
• AI Tool Verdictevery Hermes plugin on this list scored out of ten
• agentos.guidewhere each Hermes plugin fits inside an Agent OS
• aiprofitboardroom.comJulian's earlier guide to Hermes plugin types, from MCP servers to n8n

Start with Newswire, add one plugin at a time and match the model to the tools you add, and you will get the most from the best Hermes Agent plugins.