Hermes Co-Founder on Building an AI Agent That Improves Itself | Karan Malhotra

<p>📌 Copy my personal AI system to save time and build with AI: https://www.behindthecraft.com/</p><p>🤝 Get my free AI newsletter read by 150K+ professionals: https://creatoreconomy.so/</p><p><br></p><p>Karan co-founded Nous Research, the company behind Hermes, the #1 personal agent and AI app overall on OpenRouter. I found him incredibly down to earth as we discussed why open-source AI must win, how Hermes gets better the more you use it, and even a live demo of how Hermes can mod your favorite childhood games.</p><p><br></p><p>Karan and I talked about:</p><p>(00:00) How Hermes differs from Claude Code and Codex</p><p>(02:20) Why every AI model now sounds exactly the same</p><p>(11:16) How to stop AI from saying “you’re absolutely right”</p><p>(15:16) How Hermes creates skills without bloating its context</p><p>(16:40) The open vs. closed-source debate on AI safety</p><p>(23:40) Using one Kanban board for humans and AI agents</p><p>(26:45) Demo: Rebuilding a childhood Sonic world with Hermes</p><p>(36:07) How two Discord friends built a self-improving agent</p><p>(42:40) How Hermes became its own biggest contributor</p><p><br></p><p>Thanks to our sponsors:</p><p>Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang</p><p>Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft</p><p>Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang</p><p><br></p><p>📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/hermes-co-founder-on-building-an-ai-agent-that-improves-itself-karan-malhotra</p><p><br></p><p>Where to find Karan:</p><p>X: https://x.com/karan4d</p><p>Website: https://www.karan4d.com/</p><p>Hermes Agent: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent</p><p><br></p><p>Subscribe to this channel - more interviews coming soon!</p>