# Hermes Agent Installed Successfully—So Why Did the First Prompt Fail?

An AI agent can pass installation and still fail at the first sentence. Hermes Agent showed a healthy version and passed its diagnostic checks, but the first real prompt returned \`No inference provider configured\`.

That error was the starting point of the test, not the conclusion.

The promise was simple: prove whether Hermes could make a real local model call. The acceptance string was fixed in advance: \`GLOBAL_LOCAL_READY\`. A version number or a running process would not count as inference success.

I used the official [NousResearch/hermes-agent repository](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent), pinned to commit \`21b2095d\`, and installed it in an isolated directory. Hermes Agent v0.21.0, Python 3.11.15, the virtual environment, and Node dependencies were installed successfully. \`hermes doctor\` passed the environment checks, and \`hermes doctor --fix\` completed the configuration migration to v39.

The first real call exposed the actual boundary: no usable inference provider was connected. This was not an installation failure, so reinstalling would only repeat a green checkpoint.

Before selecting a local model, I checked Hermes' official requirements. The [Quickstart](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/getting-started/quickstart) specifies a minimum 64K context, and the [Providers documentation](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/integrations/providers) explains the provider requirement and the need to inspect Ollama's actual loaded context.

The formal local path used Ollama with Qwen3 4B. Its model metadata reports a 262,144 context length. That satisfies the model-level precondition; long-task readiness still requires checking the server's actual \`CONTEXT\`.

The prompt and acceptance string stayed unchanged. Only the provider moved to a local Ollama OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Hermes returned \`GLOBAL_LOCAL_READY\` with exit code 0.

The useful result is a separation of three questions: is the agent installed, is a provider connected, and is the selected model compatible? Installation, configuration migration, and minimal local inference passed. Long tasks, browser control, Computer Use, external skills, concurrency, and production performance were not tested.

For anyone deploying an open-source agent locally, this sequence is more valuable than another reinstall: check the documentation first, verify the provider layer, then test a fixed prompt against a compatible model.

Full record: <https://jianailab.com/experiments/hermes-agent-local-model-first-run>
