Hermes MissingNo: What The Free Stealth Model Is, How To Run It, And How It Compares With The Benched Free Models

Hermes MissingNo is a new free stealth model that you can run as the brain of Hermes Agent through Nous Portal.

MissingNo is a coding and agentic reasoning model, and Nous Research announced it on X on 10 October 2026.

Nous Research make Hermes Agent, and they have made MissingNo free for a limited time.

The lab that built the model hasn't been named, which is what makes it a stealth release.

In this post I'll explain what it is, what it costs, how to enable it, how to use it as a Hermes profile and how it did in my own tests.

My MissingNo video isn't public yet, so the video above is my Solar Mini 4 walkthrough, which shows the same Hermes Cloud free-model screens.

What Hermes MissingNo is

Hermes MissingNo means setting MissingNo as the main model on a Hermes Agent profile.

Hermes Agent handles the tools, memory, skills and chat, and the model does the thinking.

The name is a Pokémon reference, because MissingNo is short for "missing number", the glitch Pokémon from the original games.

Nous Research's announcement opened with "Wild MISSINGNO. appeared!", so the joke is official.

Here's what I could verify from that post and from the Nous inference API on 12 October 2026.

I've guessed that it could be Nous Research's own model, and I want to be clear that it's only a guess.

The company background is in my Hermes Agent by Nous Research post.

What MissingNo costs

MissingNo costs nothing today.

The Nous inference API showed a price of zero for input and output when I checked.

Nous Research said it's free for a limited time, and they didn't give an end date.

A stealth model can be removed or turned into a paid model at short notice.

So I use it as a free extra, and I always keep a second model ready.

How to enable MissingNo in Hermes Cloud

Hermes Cloud runs your agent on Nous Research's servers, so there's nothing to install.

You can also ask Hermes to configure Hermes Cloud for you, and it will change the model itself.

I'd still check the model section afterwards, so you know the change went through.

When I checked the API list I saw one MissingNo entry priced at zero, so I didn't see a paid twin next to it.

How to use MissingNo as a Hermes profile

I keep one Hermes profile per model inside my Agent OS.

I have a Step 5 Preview profile, which is another free model, and a MissingNo profile beside it.

Each profile has its own model, settings and memory, so testing one never breaks another.

On your own machine, hermes profile create missingno makes the profile.

The hermes dashboard command opens the dashboard where you set the main model, and hermes -p missingno opens a chat in that profile.

If MissingNo is missing from the picker, hermes model --refresh re-fetches every provider's live model list.

How MissingNo did in my Hermes tests

I ran it through the kind of jobs I actually give an agent.

The /learn command points Hermes at a source and turns it into a reusable skill.

MissingNo did that really well and fast.

The coding task didn't work so well, because a simple game took around five minutes to generate.

The game works, but it won't replace Claude Opus 5.5.

Those are my own hands-on results, and they are not GoldieBench scores.

Where else MissingNo works in Hermes

The model follows the profile, so it works across Hermes.

You can use it in Hermes Bots by creating a bot from your active profile.

You can use it in Hermes Oracle, where I'd start with competitor analysis.

You can use it in other workflows that read the model from the profile.

I also demoed a pop-up voice agent in my Agent OS that works with ChatGPT and Hermes.

I asked it for useful Hermes commands, and it listed /learn and /skills.

The bot feature has its own explainer in Hermes Agent Bot Mode.

What to do if MissingNo is removed or becomes paid

MissingNo may be taken down, it may become paid, or you may run out of tokens.

When that happens, open the model section and type "free".

There were about eight free models when I recorded, and these are the ones I named.

The free list changes often, so check it inside Hermes on the day.

The limits to know before you rely on it

MissingNo takes text only, so image jobs need a different model.

Reasoning is always on, so short questions can take a moment longer.

Nobody has published a parameter count or an official benchmark for it.

The free window has no published end date, and it can close without warning.

Like any free model, it can also run out of tokens partway through a job.

Coding was only moderate in my test, so don't make it your main builder.

Is MissingNo on GoldieBench?

MissingNo is not on the GoldieBench leaderboard, so I'm not going to give it a score it hasn't earned.

GoldieBench is my leaderboard where every model gets the same one-shot prompts to build games, pages, simulations and visuals.

Each build is rendered and scored from 0 to 10, and the number you see is the average across those tasks.

That measures how well a model plans and writes working code in one go.

It doesn't directly measure agent work like /learn or tool calling inside Hermes.

So a model can be handy in an agent and still be a weak one-shot builder, and my MissingNo tests point that way.

One slow game build is a single hands-on test, and it isn't a measured score.

I'll only put a number next to MissingNo if it goes through the same tasks as every other model.

How I'd test MissingNo against the board yourself

You don't have to wait for me to bench it.

You can run the same style of test in your own Hermes profile in a few minutes.

First, open a fresh chat in your MissingNo profile, so no old context helps it.

Second, ask for one self-contained HTML page, such as a small game or a calculator, in a single prompt.

Third, time how long the answer takes, because my game took about five minutes.

Fourth, open the page and check that it loads and the main control works first time.

Fifth, give the same prompt to a second free model and compare the two results side by side.

That's the spirit of a one-shot build test, because the model gets one go and no hand-holding.

If the page works first time, the model has passed a test that many small models fail.

If it needs three rounds of fixes, keep it on agent chores and away from builds.

The free Nous models that are benched

Two of the free models on that list do have real GoldieBench numbers.

LongCat-2.0 averages 8.12, but only 4 tasks are scored, which is why the board marks it provisional.

Laguna XS 2.1 averages 3.93 across 42 tasks, which is a much bigger sample and a much weaker result.

Those two numbers show how wide the gap between free models can be.

Being free tells you nothing about quality, so you have to test.

Where MissingNo would likely sit

I haven't benched MissingNo, so I won't guess a number.

I can tell you how I'd think about it.

My coding test produced a working game, so it can ship something that runs.

It also took five minutes and wasn't frontier level, so I don't expect it to trouble the top of the board.

For context, Claude Opus 5.5 averages 7.57 across 50 tasks, and I said plainly that MissingNo won't replace it.

Claude Opus 5 averages 8.27 across 50 tasks, and MiniMax M3 averages 7.97 across 47 tasks.

Those are the kinds of models I'd give real builds to.

MissingNo's strengths in my tests were skills and tool calls, and GoldieBench doesn't score those.

The Hermes brain plan I'd use today

Hermes doesn't ship with one fixed model, so the brain you set on each profile decides how well it works.

The smart move is to give each profile the cheapest brain that can actually do its job.

My wider picks are in the best Hermes Agent model and the best LLMs for Hermes Agent.

If you want another free model walkthrough, Solar Mini 4 Hermes covers one from the same list.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe ten-step MissingNo setup for Hermes operators
• AI Income Deskhow a business would use MissingNo inside Hermes
• AI Tool Verdictour scored verdict on MissingNo as a Hermes brain
• agentos.guidethe MissingNo quick start for your Agent OS
• agentos.guideJulian's guide to free models in Hermes

Use it for skills and tool calls while it's free, keep a benched backup ready, and watch the board for the day a real score lands for Hermes MissingNo.