How-To Series · 8: Provider Plumbing

Hermes · Manage Cloud with MCP

Connect your local Hermes to the Nous Portal MCP server so you can list, start, stop, and manage your Hermes Cloud instances by asking.

After this videoYou can manage your hosted Hermes Cloud instances from your terminal by asking your local Hermes, with OAuth instead of API keys.

Hermes Cloud runs hosted Hermes Agent instances for you on the Nous Portal. This connects your local Hermes to the Portal's MCP server with one command, hermes mcp add, using OAuth. Once connected, Hermes gets two tools: agents for list, status, and cost estimates, and agent for create, start, stop, restart, update, and destroy. Every call runs against your org with your Portal identity, re-checked on each call. You can restrict the connection to read-only by limiting the tool surface to agents.

About these resources. Every command in this video comes from the Manage Hermes Cloud with MCP guide.

New words here · Plain English

one sentence each · full glossary
Hermes CloudHosted Hermes Agent instances Nous Research runs for you on the Portal, managed from the Agents page or by asking your local Hermes.
MCP serverA program that exposes tools to an AI agent over a standard protocol. The Portal runs one that lists and manages your cloud instances.
OAuth with PKCEA login flow that needs no shared API secret. Hermes opens your browser, you authorize once, and it reuses the token with automatic refresh.

Sources · What this video distills

1 docs page · every command below traces to it
Primary guide
Manage Hermes Cloud with MCP
Read ↗

Commands shown · Copy and paste

each shows the source doc it came from
Add the Portal MCP serverfrom source ↗
hermes mcp add --url https://portal.nousresearch.com/mcp --auth oauth hermes-cloud
Verify the connectionfrom source ↗
hermes mcp test hermes-cloud
Reload MCP in the sessionfrom source ↗
/reload-mcp

Going deeper · Related Hermes docs

further reading · not sources of facts shown above

Next in the series · Episodes that build on this