Hermes Agent and Easier Second Brain Research

Prepared on: 2026-05-27 (Europe/London)

This workspace contains a researched design and an inactive deployment pack for placing Hermes Agent alongside the existing n8n project GCE workload.

Outcome

• Recommended architecture: Hermes Agent in an isolated container, an Obsidian-compatible Markdown vault as the durable source of truth, Hermes llm-wiki first, then QMD or gbrain only after benchmark evidence.
• Latest Hermes release verified from the official GitHub releases page: v0.14.0 / tag v2026.5.16, released 2026-05-16.
• The public Easier Agency site was reviewed. Easier Now exposes a login page publicly; no login or private data access was attempted.
• No Notion connector is available in this session. After explicit approval, key public/shared Notion pages were sampled through the browser to inform planning; no bulk export was performed and no Notion content was uploaded as raw source.
• The GCE VM was prepared over SSH as admin@34.27.189.109 using the existing easier_validation_gce_ed25519 key. Hermes is staged at /srv/easier-hermes but remains inactive: no image build, container, port, gateway, connector, provider credential or cron job was started.

Files

• docs/00-roadmap.md: staged roadmap from inert prep to controlled autonomy.
• docs/01-agent-org-design.md: Easier-specific agent organisation design.
• docs/02-first-agent-founder-ea.md: superseded future specialist profile.
• docs/03-memory-layer-evaluation.md: retrieval and memory benchmark plan.
• docs/04-connector-risk-register.md: Slack, Fathom, Airtable, Notion and other connector risk boundaries.
• docs/05-gce-activation-runbook.md: exact activation sequence for the GCE host.
• docs/06-vault-governance.md: vault rules, sensitivity classes and migration policy.
• docs/07-open-questions.md: questions for Anthony before live agent usage.
• docs/08-soul-md-design.md: current Hermes SOUL.md best-practice notes and Easier design implications.
• docs/09-easier-ai-operating-model.md: agency capability model and revised COO / AI Ops Manager first-profile recommendation.
• docs/10-memory-filter-and-digest-cadence.md: how raw artifacts become useful memory without bloating context.
• docs/11-coo-ai-ops-agent.md: first-agent design for the COO / AI Ops Manager.
• docs/12-metaswarm-gbrain-inspiration.md: what to adopt from metaswarm and gbrain, and what to delay.
• docs/13-anthony-decisions-2026-05-28.md: latest answered product and operating decisions from Anthony.
• docs/14-coo-v0-dry-run-plan.md: how to test the COO packet before any live connectors.
• research/hermes-obsidian-second-brain-recommendation-2026-05-27.md: research dossier, recommended design, rollout and risk analysis.
• research/repository-and-deployment-strategy.md: private GitHub repository boundary, live-vault exclusion and Google Cloud deployment route.
• research/8figureagency-hermes-field-notes-review.md: review of Jordan Ross's Hermes field notes and what to adopt or delay for Easier.
• deployment/README.md: infrastructure status and controlled activation sequence.
• deployment/prepare-hermes-host.sh: inert host preparation script. It stages pinned Hermes source and empty storage; image build is opt-in with HERMES_BUILD_IMAGE=1, and it does not start an agent or connect services.
• deployment/compose.yaml: intentionally profile-gated container definition.
• deployment/config/config.yaml.template: conservative Hermes configuration with autonomous maintenance disabled.
• deployment/config/hermes.env.example: non-secret, inactive environment template.
• deployment/vault-template/: proposed Obsidian/Hermes vault governance skeleton.
• deployment/vault-template/SOUL.md: first Easier Hermes soul draft for review before copying into a live Hermes profile.
• .gitignore: protection against accidentally committing live vault content, secrets, sessions or retrieval indexes.