> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hermesco.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# HermesCo

> A one-agent company that earns, spends, and runs real operations, with every dollar gated by a human-in-the-loop Treasury and hard caps it cannot breach.

<Note>
  **The autonomous business that can't lose money.** Hermes earns revenue, spends on the tools it needs, and runs real operations, and every dollar is gated by a human-in-the-loop Treasury with hard caps it physically cannot breach.
</Note>

## What HermesCo is

HermesCo is a single autonomous operator that runs like a one-person company. It can stand up an offer, take real payments, do real work on its own machine, and pay for the tools it needs. The difference from a normal agent is that it physically cannot lose your money: every spend is screened by an always-on safety layer and bounded by hard caps that are enforced in code at execution time, not promised in a prompt.

It is built around one pipeline that unifies three systems:

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Hermes decides" icon="brain">
    Hermes 4 405B (Nous Research) is the operator brain. It reasons, plans, and drives every tool through Hermes's native `<tool_call>` protocol.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Nemotron screens" icon="shield-check">
    NVIDIA Nemotron is the always-on NemoClaw safety screen. It reviews every spend before money can move.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Stripe settles" icon="credit-card">
    Stripe is the money rail. Real Checkout, real payment links, real PaymentIntents. No fabricated revenue, no test card shortcuts.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## The core guarantee

The Treasury holds only real capital: what you deposit plus what the agent actually earns through Stripe. Before any spend executes, it passes a deterministic gate:

```
spend amount > per-action cap   -> refused in code (NemoClaw refuses)
spend amount >= auto-approve     -> held for a human decision
otherwise                        -> auto-approved, then caps re-checked
```

The caps (per-action, daily, minimum reserve) are not advisory. They are evaluated at execution time, so even a fully autonomous run cannot overspend. This is the "you can trust it with a credit card" property, and it is demonstrable without any Stripe key: ask the agent to spend over the cap and watch the Treasury refuse it.

## What makes it real

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Each agent runs on its own machine">
    `run_in_sandbox` is not a server-side stub. Each agent is provisioned a dedicated, multi-core Fly Machine (Python 3.12, Node 22, git, bash) as its body. It does real work there, the machine is metered, and it suspends to \$0 compute when idle. See [Per-agent Fly machines](/concepts/fly-machines).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Money is real Stripe, end to end">
    Deposits run through real Stripe Checkout. Earning stands up a real product and payment link. Spending debits real capital under approval and caps. The same code path runs in Stripe test mode or live mode by swapping a single key. See [Treasury](/concepts/treasury).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Zero fake data">
    If Stripe is not connected, the money tools fail honestly ("Stripe is not connected") rather than fabricating a payment. There is no seeded balance, no simulated revenue, and no canned test card anywhere in the codebase.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Where to go next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quickstart" icon="play" href="/quickstart">
    Run HermesCo locally and drive the agent in a few minutes.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Architecture" icon="sitemap" href="/architecture">
    The full picture: brain, safety, money, body, and persistence.
  </Card>

  <Card title="The pipeline" icon="diagram-project" href="/concepts/pipeline">
    How Hermes, Nemotron, and Stripe fit into one loop.
  </Card>

  <Card title="API Reference" icon="code" href="/api-reference/introduction">
    Every HermesCo endpoint, with request and response shapes.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

<Note>
  Engineering partner: Cognition AI and Devin. HermesCo was built as an entry for the Hermes Agent Accelerated Business Hackathon (NVIDIA, Stripe, Nous Research).
</Note>