How-To Series · Episode 08 / 59 · Module 2: Daily Driver

Hermes · Pick Your Brain

Switch the model from your terminal, mid-session, or per-command. Pick a lane based on what you need.

After this videoYou can now swap models on the fly for cost or capability.

Hermes is model-agnostic. Same agent, same tools, any brain. Three places to switch: hermes model from your terminal to add new providers and run OAuth, /model inside a chat to swap between configured ones, and -m per-run for a one-shot override. Then a four-lane picker for which kind of provider fits your job.

About these resources. Four docs pages contributed facts: the CLI commands reference (the three switch points), the Model Catalog (the live picker), Provider Routing (the four-lane framing), and the Nous Portal page (the bundled-subscription lane). The Sources block names all four.

Sources · What this video distills

4 docs pages · every command below is traceable to one of them

Primary · the three switch points and the /model vs hermes model distinction (line 167)

CLI commands reference

Live provider catalog the picker uses

Model Catalog

The four-lane positioning (Local · Direct · OpenRouter · Portal)

Provider Routing

The bundled-subscription lane

Nous Portal

Commands shown · Copy and paste

each shows the source doc it came from

Add a provider, run OAuth, set defaultsfrom CLI commands reference ↗

hermes model

Swap for this sessionfrom CLI commands reference ↗

/model claude-sonnet-4

Swap and save as defaultfrom CLI commands reference ↗

/model gpt-5 --global

One-shot with a specific modelfrom CLI commands reference ↗

hermes -z -m anthropic/claude-opus-4.7 "summarize this"

Chat with a per-run model overridefrom CLI commands reference ↗

hermes chat -m openai/gpt-5.5 -q "what is new"

Going deeper · Related Hermes docs

further reading · not sources of facts shown above

Provider Routing rules

Auto-pick the right model by difficulty (covered in E52).

Fallback Providers

Auto-flip to backup on provider errors (covered in E53).

Next in the series · Episodes that build on this

E50

The Provider Landscape

E52

Provider Routing

E53

Fallback Providers

E55

Configuring Models In Detail