SME Centre@SMF  /  Business Advisor session
Setup guides  /  copy, paste, done

Four things to install, in order.

Written for someone who has never opened a terminal. Do them one at a time. If a step fails, stop there and bring the error to the session rather than skipping ahead.

Before you start You need: a Mac you are allowed to install software on, about 30 minutes, and a Telegram or Slack account. Nothing here needs a corporate IT ticket, and nothing here needs a credit card until the very last optional step.
GUIDE 01

Install Hermes Agent

This is the assistant itself. It is free and open source; you only pay for the AI model it uses, and only for what it uses.

Check one thing first

The macOS installer supports Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later). Intel Macs are not a supported platform, so on an older machine use the terminal install path or skip this guide.

Path A: the desktop app, easiest

  1. Go to hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs and download the Hermes Desktop installer.
  2. Open the downloaded file, then drag Hermes into your Applications folder.
  3. Open Hermes from Applications. The first run walks you through signing in and picking a model.

Path B: the terminal, same result

  1. Open Terminal (press Command and Space, type "Terminal", press Enter).
  2. Paste this line and press Enter. It installs everything the assistant needs. 
    curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
  3. Reload your shell so the new command is found. 
    source ~/.zshrc
  4. Pick your AI model. The wizard asks who you want to pay for model usage. 
    hermes model
  5. Check it is healthy. 
    hermes doctor
  6. Say hello. 
    hermes
The short path If you would rather not pick a provider, one command signs you in and bundles the model plus the extra tools (web search, image generation, text to speech, browser): 
hermes setup --portal

Optional extras

GUIDE 02

Connect it to Telegram

Telegram is the fastest way to talk to an assistant from your phone. It is a chat app, so there is nothing new to learn.

The 60-second path

  1. Open the Hermes dashboard or desktop app and go to Messaging → Telegram.
  2. Click Create with QR. Scan the code in Telegram, or open the link on the phone.
  3. That is it. Hermes creates the bot, works out your Telegram user ID, saves both, and restarts the gateway.

The manual path, if you want to see the moving parts

  1. In Telegram, search for @BotFather and open it.
  2. Send /newbot.
  3. Give it a display name (anything, for example "My Assistant").
  4. Give it a username. It must be unique and must end in bot, for example lewis_assistant_bot.
  5. BotFather replies with an API token that looks like 123456789:ABCdef.... Copy it.
  6. Open the file ~/.hermes/.env and add two lines: 
    TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=paste-your-token-here
TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS=your-numeric-telegram-id
  7. Restart the messaging gateway so it picks up the change.

Optional polish

Treat the token like a password. Anyone holding it can control the bot. Never paste it into a chat, a slide or a screenshot. If it leaks, send /revoke to BotFather and set a new one. The ALLOWED_USERS line is what stops a stranger who finds your bot from using your assistant and your money.
GUIDE 03

Connect it to Slack

Slack is the work-appropriate surface: the assistant answers in a channel or a DM, and colleagues can be added to the same workspace later.

This uses Slack's Socket Mode, which means the bot dials out to Slack over a private connection. You do not need to expose anything on the internet, which is exactly why it is the right choice for a work laptop.

Step 1: let Hermes write the app definition

  1. In Terminal, run: 
    hermes slack manifest --agent-view --write
    It writes ~/.hermes/slack-manifest.json and prints instructions. That file already declares every permission, event and slash command the assistant needs, so you do not have to hunt for them.

Step 2: create the Slack app from that file

  1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App.
  2. Choose From an app manifest.
  3. Pick your workspace, then paste the contents of the JSON file.
  4. Review and click Create.

Step 3: switch on Socket Mode

  1. In the new app's sidebar, go to Settings → Socket Mode and turn it on.
  2. When asked for an app-level token, name it something like hermes-socket and give it the connections:write scope.
  3. Generate it and copy the token. It starts with xapp-. Keep it.

Step 4: allow direct messages

  1. Go to Features → App Home.
  2. Under Show Tabs, turn the Messages Tab on.
  3. Tick "Allow users to send Slash commands and messages from the messages tab".

Step 5: install it to the workspace

  1. Go to Settings → Install App and click Install to Workspace.
  2. Review the permissions and click Allow.
  3. Copy the Bot User OAuth Token. It starts with xoxb-.

Step 6: find your member ID

  1. In Slack, click your own name or avatar, then View full profile.
  2. Click the three-dot menu and choose Copy member ID. It looks like U01ABC2DEF3.

Step 7: paste the three values into Hermes

  1. Open ~/.hermes/.env and add: 
    SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=xoxb-your-bot-token
SLACK_APP_TOKEN=xapp-your-app-token
SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS=U01ABC2DEF3
  2. Restart the messaging gateway.
  3. Send the assistant a direct message in Slack. If it replies, you are done.
The two mistakes everyone makes. If it works in direct messages but stays silent in channels, the channel events are missing (Hermes' generated manifest includes them; a hand-built app usually does not). And if you ever change the app's permissions, you must reinstall it to the workspace, because Slack caches the old set.
GUIDE 04

Install Meetily

This is the meeting note-taker. It records and transcribes on your own machine, so a client's voice never leaves your laptop.

Install

  1. Go to meetily.ai/downloads (or the GitHub releases page) and download the build for your machine. macOS and Windows have installers; Linux runs from a Docker or source build.
  2. On a Mac: open the downloaded .dmg, drag Meetily into Applications, then open it from Applications.
  3. On Windows: run the downloaded x64-setup.exe installer.
  4. On first launch it asks for microphone and, on a Mac, system audio permission. Say yes to both. Without system audio it cannot hear the other side of the call.

First run

  1. Download a local transcription model when prompted. Whisper and Parakeet models are offered; they are a few hundred megabytes and they stay on the machine.
  2. Choose how summaries are generated. Ollama (local) keeps everything on the laptop. Alternatively point it at your own API key (Claude, Groq, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint), which sends the transcript out for summarising only.
  3. Decide where the database lives, or accept the default.

Use it in a real meeting

  1. Start the recording in Meetily before you join the call. It captures your system audio, so no bot joins the meeting and the client sees nothing unusual.
  2. Let it transcribe live. You can keep working; the transcript builds itself.
  3. When the call ends, click Generate Summary. Six summary templates are included out of the box.
  4. Export. Markdown export is free; PDF and DOCX come with Pro. You can also copy the transcript straight out.

What is free and what is not

Where it fits with your assistant On Pro, Meetily can hand a finished meeting to your assistant through MCP, a webhook when the recording ends, or the command line, which exports a meeting as Markdown, text or JSON. That is the difference between notes you have to find and notes that come to you.
Two honest caveats. Speaker labelling (who said what) is a Pro feature, so on the free tier the transcript is a wall of text. And analytics inside the app are opt-in by default, so leave them off if you would rather nothing at all leaves the machine.