This DSF Seminar slot is a workshop, not a talk. In the hallway of the institute stands an Apple iMac M1 that will stay switched on around the clock. On it runs Hermes Agent, an open-source AI agent by Nous Research that listens for a wake word, speaks with its own voice, learns skills, keeps a memory and connects to tools. Our aim is to find out, together, whether such an agent can become a real helper for the institute, and what that teaches us about working with AI agents in a research setting.
The iMac comes into the world without a name. In the first minutes of the workshop it will wake up, ask who is in the room and how it should be called. From there we work in small groups: we write its personality file (SOUL.md), choose its voice, and teach it its first skills, from greeting visitors in the hallway to counting coffees in the kitchen. Each group presents its skill live, by talking to the iMac. The workshop ends with the start of a contest for “the most unlikely but most practical application” and with sponsorships: every member of the team can adopt one skill, one connection or one character trait and keep it alive after the kickoff.
The technical side is prepared in advance: the language model is Claude via the Anthropic API, speech recognition and wake-word detection run locally on the Mac, and clear rules apply from day one, among them that no confidential data and no student data ever reach the model. The workshop is meant to be fun and to produce something lasting: a working assistant, a set of best practices for AI agents at the institute, and, if it works, a small seminar series that grows out of it.
Format: hands-on, 2 hours, in small groups, with music, snacks and drinks. No prior knowledge of Hermes needed. Bring a laptop if you want to write skills yourself (they reach the iMac via AirDrop, and the iMac comments on what arrives); talking to it needs nothing but your voice.
Who: the team of the Institute for Data Science Foundations only. This first round is internal; students and guests of the institute follow in a later session. No registration required"
