There Is No ‘Hermes OS’: Omarchy Belongs to DHH, Hermes to Nous Research, and the Install Wipes Your Drive

By Evan Vega

Misleading Video Promotes Nonexistent ‘Hermes OS’ Despite Technical Risks

A viral promotional video claiming the release of a new “Hermes OS” has sparked warnings from technical analysts after investigations revealed the software does not exist as a standalone operating system. The video, published Sept. 12 to a channel with 424,000 subscribers, targeted non-technical users but omitted critical installation warnings and hardware incompatibilities.

The software being promoted is actually a combination of two separate open-source projects. Omarchy is a Linux distribution created by David Heinemeier Hansson, the developer of Ruby on Rails, while Hermes Agent is an AI application developed by Nous Research. While both projects are legitimately free and MIT-licensed, they are distinct entities.

The recent update, released Sept. 9, simply integrated the Hermes Agent into the Omarchy desktop environment. This allows users to install the agent via a system menu and set it as a default terminal agent. Despite this integration, the two remain separate tools rather than a unified “Hermes OS.”

Technical audits conducted by Frontier Watch highlight significant risks for users attempting to follow the video’s installation guide. According to the project’s own manual, the default installation process will wipe the user’s selected drive, a detail not mentioned in the promotional content.

Furthermore, the video claims the software can be run on Mac computers, but the Omarchy manual explicitly states that “M-series Mac is not directly supported at this time.” This excludes every Mac sold by Apple since 2020. Because the stock installer image is x86-64 only, it cannot boot in ARM64 virtual machines. Community reports indicate that attempting to emulate the software on Apple silicon via UTM results in speeds too slow for practical use.

Despite the confusion, both underlying projects maintain significant developer interest. Omarchy has garnered 40,500 stars on its repository, while the Hermes Agent has seen substantial growth with 244,800 stars and 50,800 forks as of its version 0.21.0 “Pantheon” release on Aug. 31.

Experts warn that while the move toward “agentic” operating systems—where AI is integrated into the OS rather than running as a standalone app—is a promising trend, users should rely on official documentation rather than social media tutorials to avoid permanent data loss or hardware incompatibility.

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Related: Frontier Watch

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