Overview

Hermes vs OpenClaw — animated

You want…	Pick
WhatsApp/Telegram assistant with minimal Python	OpenClaw — `openclaw onboard`
Agent that creates and refines skills from experience	Hermes — learning loop + Curator
Node/TypeScript shop, ClawHub skills, Canvas/mobile nodes	OpenClaw
Multi-agent swarms, ACP handoff to Codex/Claude Code	Hermes + awesome-hermes-agent
Gemma + local RAG on chat (this repo's pattern)	OpenClaw — openclaw-gemma-rag
Migrate off OpenClaw without rebuilding channels	Hermes — `hermes claw migrate`
Largest single-repo assistant community (2026)	OpenClaw (very high GitHub traction)
Research-aligned stack (Nous models + tooling)	Hermes

Install both (5 minutes each)¶

OpenClaw (requires Node 22.19+):

npm install -g openclaw@latest
openclaw onboard --install-daemon
openclaw doctor

Hermes:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
source ~/.zshrc   # or ~/.bashrc
hermes setup --portal
hermes doctor

Verify from this guide:

cd guides/hermes-vs-openclaw
chmod +x verify-comparison.sh
./verify-comparison.sh