Micro PC notes

How I brought an agent home

A short story about turning a small Orange Pi node into a local home for Hermes Agent, tools, memory, and git-backed work.

2026-08-01 · 2 min read

At first it was just hardware: a clear case, a board, a little fan, a cable, power, and network. I simply had to assemble the case and plug the board in. The board cost about 76 CAD, the microSD card was about 15 CAD, and the case plus fan was about 10 CAD, so the whole setup came together for around 100 CAD.

Orange Pi single-board computer in a transparent acrylic case — The actual little box: board, microSD, case, fan, and cable — about a 100 CAD local agent node.

The Orange Pi Linux setup was pretty easy. I downloaded the official Orange Pi image, used Rufus to write the Linux system with drivers onto the memory card, inserted it, and turned the board on.

Orange Pi terminal login banner showing system status and IP addresses — After the image booted, the board had a normal Linux login and was ready for the next setup steps.

Hermes was much easier to shape than OpenClaw for this use case because skills are built into the concept. Instead of only trying to make the agent act autonomous, I could give it reusable procedures, tools, browser control, messages, and memory that fit the way I actually work.

Hermes Agent terminal screen showing available tools, MCP servers, and skills — Hermes gave the box a working interface: tools, MCP, skills, browser control, and a session that could act from the same machine.

So I ended up trusting git. If a project mattered, it belonged in a repository. If a workflow mattered, it became a skill. If a change mattered, the diff was the receipt.

The breakthrough was not teaching the machine to remember everything. It was teaching the work to leave evidence.

Write it down, diff it, commit it, push it.