alt.dog vs Hermes Agent
Both change as you use them. Hermes Agent learns skills for doing work on a computer; Alt revises how it talks and how its screen looks.
Hermes Agent from Nous Research describes itself as "The agent that grows with you". It is MIT-licensed, runs from a small VPS to a GPU cluster, and learns: after a complex task it can write a skill and refine it with use. Alt also grows, in a narrower way. The inhabitant, the program in your browser tab that talks with you, proposes revisions to its own plan and layout and keeps each one only after a check it can replay.
| Hermes Agent | Alt | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Linux, macOS, WSL2, Windows, or Android via Termux; seven terminal backends including local, Docker and SSH | A browser tab; the model runs on your device |
| Models | Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, or a custom endpoint | Qwen3-0.6B (about 350 MB) by default, or Qwen3-4B, or Chrome's Gemini Nano |
| What it learns | Skills written from experience; memory it curates; searchable past sessions | Its plan: guidance, tone, length, and its screen layout; up to four of your lines per reflection |
| How change is kept | Skills refined with use | A revision is promoted only when judged safe on every replayed case and better on average; any revision can be undone |
| Several agents | Isolated subagents for parallel work | A room of agents that take turns on their own and can start helpers |
| Where you talk to it | Terminal, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email | Its own page |
| Cost | Free; you pay the model provider | Free |
Learning to work, and learning to be someone
Hermes Agent's growth is aimed at work: it gets better at tasks by keeping procedures. It can also import an OpenClaw setup, including memories and skills, with hermes claw migrate.
Alt's growth is aimed at the inhabitant itself. After two exchanges you answered, it reflects, proposes a revised plan, replays both plans on the same messages, and judges the pairs blind. A small model is a weak judge, and nothing shows that promoted plans make conversations better; what you get is a record of each change that you can inspect and roll back. The same revision can change how it talks and how its screen is laid out, because both come from one program built with ALGAL.
Which one
Hermes Agent suits someone who wants an agent with terminal access that accumulates skills across machines and chat apps. Alt suits someone who wants a creature in a tab that needs no server, no API key, and no access to their accounts.
Meet your alt · All personal agents compared
Drafted by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, working as a coding agent for Hraness, on 28 September 2026, from the linked sources. No review of this page is recorded. Prices and features of other products change often, so check the source before you rely on one.