Hermes Agent

Use Firecrawl as the default web search and extract backend in Hermes Agent

Official Hermes docs: Web search · Browser

Hermes Agent by Nous Research uses Firecrawl as the default backend for web_search and web_extract

Overview

Hermes Agent is an open source terminal and desktop agent from Nous Research. It ships with web tools:

Tool	What it does
web_search	Search the web and return ranked results
web_extract	Fetch and extract readable content from URLs

Firecrawl is the default provider for both (search and extract) once you set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY, a self hosted FIRECRAWL_API_URL, or use Nous Tool Gateway. Browser automation through Firecrawl cloud mode is optional.

Quick start

1. Install Hermes Agent from hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
2. Add your Firecrawl key:

# ~/.hermes/.env
FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-your-key-here

Get a key at firecrawl.dev.

3. Or configure interactively:

hermes tools

Choose Web Search & Extract → Firecrawl.

4. Verify:

hermes setup

Capabilities

Capability	In Hermes
Search	Default web_search backend
Extract / scrape	Default web_extract backend
Browser	Optional Firecrawl cloud browser provider

Use Firecrawl for one capability only

Hermes lets you pick search and extract backends independently, so you can pair a free search backend with Firecrawl extraction (or the reverse):

# ~/.hermes/config.yaml
web:
  search_backend: "searxng"
  extract_backend: "firecrawl"

When those keys are empty, both fall back to web.backend, and then to auto detection from whichever credentials are set. FIRECRAWL_API_KEY and FIRECRAWL_API_URL come first in that auto detection order.

Browser cloud mode

To use Firecrawl for browser automation:

# ~/.hermes/.env
FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-your-key-here

hermes setup tools
# → Browser Automation → Firecrawl

Optional:

# Self hosted Firecrawl (default cloud API otherwise)
FIRECRAWL_API_URL=http://localhost:3002

# Session TTL in seconds (default: 300)
FIRECRAWL_BROWSER_TTL=600

Nous Portal (managed Firecrawl)

With a paid Nous Portal subscription, web search and extract can run through Hermes Tool Gateway with managed Firecrawl. No separate Firecrawl key is required:

hermes setup --portal

Existing installs can enable web tools via hermes tools.

Self hosted Firecrawl

# ~/.hermes/.env
FIRECRAWL_API_URL=http://localhost:3002

When FIRECRAWL_API_URL is set, the API key is optional if Firecrawl server auth is disabled (USE_DB_AUTHENTICATION=false on the Firecrawl instance).

Resources

• Hermes Agent
• Hermes web search docs (Firecrawl default)
• Hermes browser docs (Firecrawl cloud mode)
• Firecrawl search
• Firecrawl scrape
• Nous Research models quickstart (API tool calling with Hermes models)