Hermes

Forked from dearhermes.com — built on the Dignified Technology design philosophy.

A local-first AI writing tool that structures your thinking without doing the writing for you.

Write in a 5-tab markdown editor, get streamed chat feedback with inline highlights. Bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key — no accounts, no cloud, no tracking.

Download

Hermes v0.3.0 — macOS (Apple Silicon)

The app is unsigned. Right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper on first launch.

Features

• Multi-project support — create, rename, and switch between independent writing projects
• TipTap markdown editor with 5 tabbed pages (Coral, Amber, Sage, Sky, Lavender) per project
• AI assistant chat with inline highlights and source citations
• BYOK — use your own Anthropic or OpenAI API keys
• Model selector — Claude Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5, Opus 4.6, GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini
• Workspace folders — drafts saved as markdown files on disk, per project
• Persistent chat — chat history saved per project and restored across sessions
• Focus mode for distraction-free writing
• Markdown support — paste markdown, use shortcuts, or write with standard syntax

How It Works

On first launch, Hermes creates a workspace folder at ~/Documents/Hermes. Each project gets its own subfolder with markdown files for each tab and a chat.json for chat history. Existing folders in the workspace are automatically imported as projects.

~/Documents/Hermes/
├── My First Project/
│   ├── coral.md
│   ├── amber.md
│   ├── sage.md
│   ├── sky.md
│   ├── lavender.md
│   └── chat.json
├── Essay Draft/
│   └── ...

You can change the workspace folder in Settings → Workspace.

Architecture

• apps/web — React 19 + Vite frontend
• server — Express 5 SSE assistant API (stateless proxy)
• apps/native/src-tauri — Tauri 2 shell that bundles the server as a sidecar
• packages/api — shared types and welcome seed content

No database. API keys are stored locally on-device and sent per-request.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 22 (see .node-version)
• npm (comes with Node)
• Rust + Cargo (for native builds only)

# Install Rust (macOS / Linux)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

For full Tauri platform requirements, see Tauri v2 Prerequisites.

Quick Start

npm install
npm run dev

This starts the frontend at http://localhost:5176 and the server at http://127.0.0.1:3003.

1. Open Settings (gear icon in the top bar)
2. Add your Anthropic and/or OpenAI API key → Save
3. Select a model in the chat input area and start writing

Native Desktop (Tauri)

npm run native:dev             # Dev mode (rebuilds sidecar + Tauri)
npm run native:dev:fast        # Dev mode (skip sidecar rebuild)
npm run native:dev:debugtools  # Dev mode with DevTools enabled
npm run native:build           # Production build (.app + .dmg)

Environment Variables

Server env file: server/.env (all optional for local dev)

FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5176
HOST=127.0.0.1
PORT=3003
LOG_LEVEL=info
SENTRY_DSN=
NODE_ENV=development

No API keys in server env — they come from the client per-request.

Quality Checks

npm run lint
npm run server:typecheck
npm run web:build

License

See LICENSE for details.