Hermes Agent Installation and MYAI168 Setup Guide — Windows

Goal of this guide: install Hermes Agent (a local AI agent from Nous Research) on Windows and connect it to your own MYAI168 API, using Claude Opus 4.8.

The native Windows installer (no WSL needed) automatically installs uv, Python, Node, ripgrep, ffmpeg, and a portable Git — you do not need to install anything beforehand. Everything is done in PowerShell, and the config files are edited with Notepad.

Endpoints and Model

Anthropic native endpoint    https://www.myai168.com/en/api/anthropic   (without /v1)
OpenAI-compatible endpoint   https://www.myai168.com/en/api/openai/v1
Main model                   claude-opus-4-8 (via the Anthropic endpoint)

Important Security Notes

• Hermes is an agent with real system permissions: it can read and write files, run commands, and control the browser. Do not install it on a primary machine holding lots of sensitive data; early token usage can be high, so set a usage cap in the MYAI168 dashboard.
• Treat your API key like a password and never share it. If it leaks, revoke it in the MYAI168 dashboard and issue a new one.

⚠ Important: the installer will pop up a Nous Portal login

During installation (possibly at any step) a browser window opens automatically, and PowerShell shows something like:

To continue: 1. Open: https://portal.nousresearch.com/...
Waiting for approval (polling every 1s)...

That is Nous's own subscription service, not the MYAI168 we are going to use. When you see it: press Ctrl + C in PowerShell to interrupt, close the browser page, and do NOT log in or enter the code shown on screen. Skipping it does not affect the rest of the setup (see "2. Skip the Nous Portal Login").

Config File Locations (Windows)

• Config: %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\config.yaml
• Keys: %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\.env
• (Usually C:\Users\your-account\AppData\Local\hermes\)

Open PowerShell (no administrator rights needed) and run:

iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)

During installation it asks whether to install system packages:

• Install ripgrep / ffmpeg? → Y (faster search + voice, recommended).
• Install build tools? → Y (needed to compile Python packages, do install).

The installer handles downloading and installing these dependencies automatically (the official docs state you do not need to install ripgrep / ffmpeg manually); no administrator rights are required and no password prompt appears.

Next (if the login step was not interrupted) the setup wizard starts; but usually you press Ctrl + C at the login step, and the wizard gets interrupted along with it — that is completely fine, because this guide does NOT rely on the wizard for the MYAI168 setup; it edits config.yaml manually in "3. Connect to MYAI168". Whether the wizard finished or not does not matter, and you do not need to reinstall.

(If the wizard does run through, the choices are: Terminal backend → Keep current (local); messaging platforms → select none; tools / other providers → Skip everything.)

As long as the following command prints a version number, Hermes itself is installed and you can go straight to "3. Connect to MYAI168" — open a NEW PowerShell window and check:

hermes --version

As noted in the Installation Overview: when the installer automatically shows "Not logged into Nous Portal / Starting login" and opens a browser asking you to log in — that is Nous's own subscription service, not MYAI168.

• Press Ctrl + C in PowerShell to interrupt.
• Close the browser page directly; do not log in and do not enter the user_code shown.
• Skipping it does not affect the rest of the setup.

Step 1: write the keys into .env (replace with your real key; paste each line once and press Enter):

echo 'MYAI168_CLAUDE_API_KEY=your-key' >> $env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\.env
echo 'MYAI168_API_KEY=your-key' >> $env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\.env

Step 2: open config.yaml with Notepad:

notepad $env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\config.yaml

The top of the file usually contains these 5 default lines:

model:
  default: anthropic/claude-opus-4.6
  provider: auto
  base_url: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1
providers: {}

Select and delete these 5 lines, and replace them with the content below (keep everything else — the fallback_providers, toolsets, agent, etc. sections below them — untouched):

model:
  provider: custom:myai168_claude
  default: claude-opus-4-8
  context_length: 200000

custom_providers:
  - name: myai168_claude
    base_url: https://www.myai168.com/en/api/anthropic
    key_env: MYAI168_CLAUDE_API_KEY
    api_mode: anthropic_messages

providers: {}

★★ Paste carefully ★★ YAML is extremely sensitive to indentation. The three top-level items model: / custom_providers: / providers: must be flush-left (0 leading spaces); only their sub-items are indented. After pasting into Notepad, check that these three items start at the very left edge with no spaces in front; indent with spaces only, never Tab.

Save with Ctrl + S (choose UTF-8 if asked about encoding) and close.

Key Points

• Indent YAML with spaces, not Tab.
• The three top-level items model: / custom_providers: / providers: must be flush-left with no leading spaces (the most common mistake is the whole block being over-indented, which makes parsing fail).
• The Anthropic endpoint base_url must end with .../anthropic (without /v1).
• key_env takes the environment variable NAME, not the key itself.

If hermes reports something like "Failed to parse config.yaml" after saving, it is almost always broken indentation or leading spaces before a top-level item — reopen Notepad, check that those three top-level items are flush-left, fix and save again.

Note: cc-switch writes for Hermes may silently fail (the settings never actually land in config.yaml), so for Hermes use the manual Notepad setup in this section and do not rely on cc-switch.

Open a new PowerShell and simply type:

hermes

Once inside, just type and send. If the status bar at the bottom shows claude-opus-4-8, you are done. (If "Auxiliary title generation failed: HTTP 404" appears, that is a minor auxiliary-model feature failing; it does not affect the main conversation and can be ignored.)

Confirm the settings were written (optional):

Get-Content $env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\config.yaml -TotalCount 12

• hermes command not found → open a new PowerShell window so PATH takes effect. (On macOS: source ~/.zshrc or reopen the terminal.)
• Interactive chat reports unrecognized arguments (Chinese input) → the Chinese IME turned the quotes into full-width ones. Just type hermes to enter the interactive UI and type inside it.
• Cannot paste into nano / Notepad → in the Windows terminal paste with the right mouse button or Ctrl+Shift+V (not Ctrl+V); or write the file directly with commands (echo / cat >).
• Replies fail with 404 / not found → change the base_url of myai168_claude from .../anthropic to .../anthropic/v1 and try again.
• Replies fail with 401 / unauthorized → MYAI168_CLAUDE_API_KEY in .env is missing or wrong.
• No inference provider configured (even though you configured it) → the model block in config.yaml is still the default values and was not changed to custom:myai168_claude.
• Auxiliary title generation failed: HTTP 404 → a minor auxiliary-model feature failing; it does not affect the main conversation and can be ignored.
• Switch models → use /model inside a conversation; to add a provider, exit the session and run hermes model.

Update to the latest version:

hermes update

Rotate the API Key (after a leak, or periodically)

1. Revoke the old key in the MYAI168 dashboard and issue a new one.
2. Update MYAI168_CLAUDE_API_KEY / MYAI168_API_KEY in %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\.env. (On macOS: ~/.hermes/.env.)
3. Restart Hermes.

Official docs: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs