OPEN ALAN
Cloud brain. Private desktop tools. Stock Hermes.
Your agents live on your VM, reach into your Mac or PC while it's awake,
and keep working when the lid closes. One conversation on Telegram, a
fleet that never sleeps — built on the Hermes you already run.
LINUX: BUILD FROM SOURCE. OR INSTALL FROM A TERMINAL, COPY THE ONE-LINER FOR MAC OR WINDOWS.
OPENALAN IS A COMPANION, NOT A FORK.
A removable layer around a stock Hermes install: native plugins, hooks,
skills and MCP — no patches to the agent, no second cloud brain, nothing
you can't uninstall.
The VPS stays the authoritative mind — transcript, memory, cloud work. Your computer exposes only what you approve, over a private connection you already trust. Close the laptop and the work doesn't die; it routes home to the VM and keeps moving.
THREE PARTS, ONE LAYER.
The local app, Mac or Windows: chat with your bots and see their
fast browser. The remote app: sharper computer use on the bot's
home machine, plus the tooling handoffs need. The Hermes plugin:
the behaviors: proactivity, computer use and handoffs.
TELEGRAM, THE GATEWAY
Message it from any device — it never breaks. The most consistent front door for Hermes, with bot feedback and signals built in.
ONE HOME, MANY WORKPLACES
Bots live on your VM and borrow your computer while it's awake. Close the lid — cloud work keeps going; machine-scoped jobs wait visibly, never silently re-homed.
AGENT BROWSER
Real Chromium tabs each bot drives with a named, colored cursor — page tints while it works. Take over revokes its input instantly; give to agent hands it back. Installs extensions straight from the Chrome Web Store.
WINDOW INTO THE MACHINE
A noVNC viewer floats over the workspace — watch the VPS desktop live, or take control with real mouse, scroll and keys. Paste only when you click it.
NATIVE PROACTIVITY
An optional plugin gives your existing primary initiative — reviews memory, tasks and watches, then picks one useful action or stays silent. Bounded: quiet hours, daily caps, pause/resume.
STOCK HERMES, NO FORK
Companion + gateway only. Your Hermes stays upstream — upgrade it freely, remove the layer freely.
THE BOUNDARY IS THE FEATURE
Each bot drives only its own tabs, under a named cursor you can see. Take a tab back and the bot can no longer read it. A handoff that lands on a login waits for you and never carries passwords. SSH with pinned host keys; a local-only API behind a token. You can always see, stop and take back what the agent is doing.
┌──────────────┐ ┌────────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────────┐
│ TELEGRAM │ │ VPS · HERMES │ │ MAC OR PC · BROWSER │
│ phone · any │ ──────> │ companion + plugin │ ──────> │ bot tabs · your tabs │
│ one convo │ <────── │ brain + transcript │ │ take over any time │
└──────▲───────┘ └─────────┬──────────┘ └──────────▲────────────┘
│ │ SSH · verified │
│ Web A: the same │ host keys │ browser-MCP:
│ chats inside the app │ │ bot drives
│ │ noVNC desktop stream │ local tabs
│ │ (watch · take control) │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────┘
└─────────────> │ MAC OR WINDOWS DESKTOP APP │
│ same chats · agent Chromium tabs · │
│ VPS desktop viewer · updates itself │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Agent-run setup — your coding agent follows the guide and stops for the few clicks only you can make. Runs on an Apple Silicon Mac or a Windows 10/11 PC (the installer fetches Node itself), with a Linux VPS running Hermes 0.21+ and Node 22+.
PLATFORMS · LINUX VPS BRAIN × MACOS — APPLE SILICON · WINDOWS 10/11 X64
SOON · INTEL MAC · LINUX LOCAL
Click download. Mac (Apple Silicon) or Windows 10/11 x64, one click. The app updates itself from then on.
Connect Telegram. Sign in inside the app; your Hermes Telegram gateway should already be running. The wizard hands you the prompt.
Give your agent the prompt. Your remote Hermes bot follows it and installs the plugin, the browser and computer use on its own machine; it stops only for the clicks that need a human.
Get to work. Message the bot and watch its cursor appear in your app. setup.sh --verify already proved the VPS side.
Set up Alan's Way. Fetch https://openalan.com/agent-prompt and follow the text block in it exactly. Do not modify Hermes. Never print secrets.
Set up Alan's Way for me by following https://openalan.com/setup
curl -fsSL https://openalan.com/install-mac | sh
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://openalan.com/install-windows | iex"
| OPEN ALAN | GROKBOT | MUSE | HERMES (STOCK) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open source, self-hosted | ◆ | — | — | ◆ |
| Runs on your own VM | ◆ | — | — | ◆ |
| Message it from any device | ◆ | ◐ | ◐ | ◐ |
| One brain, many workplaces | ◆ | ◆ | — | — |
| Drives real browser tabs on your desktop | ◆ | ◐ | — | ◐ |
| Watch & control the VPS desktop | ◆ | ◐ | — | ◐ |
| Cloud work survives a closed laptop | ◆ | — | — | ◐ |
| Bounded proactivity (quiet hours, caps) | ◆ | ◐ | ◐ | — |
| Least-privilege local tools | ◆ | — | — | ◐ |
| Skills · hooks · MCP extensibility | ◆ | ◐ | — | ◆ |
"Grokbot, Dot, Muse, or Instinct can never beat this."
— the launch
THE APP · MAC AND WINDOWS.
When an update is out, the app shows Update available with the new
version. Click Update now and it updates the app on your computer
and the Alan's Way tools on your agent's VM together. If the VM can't be
reached, the app still updates and offers a Retry button for the VM.
THE HERMES PLUGIN · ON YOUR AGENT'S MACHINE.
Plugin updates arrive through the official Hermes plugin catalog after the
Hermes team reviews them. If Hermes asks you to restart the gateway, run
hermes gateway restart.
hermes plugins update alans-way
hermes plugins update alans-way-computer