Argus

Argus is a real-time multimodal AI agent that can watch a shared screen or camera, listen to user and environment audio, answer questions about recent frames, recall earlier events, and run long-lived monitors or research tasks.

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Argus is derived from Hermes Agent by Nous Research. The original copyright and MIT license are preserved in LICENSE.

Highlights

• Current and historical visual question answering through query_multimodal.
• Continuous event monitoring with set_monitor.
• Long-running video research with set_live_watcher.
• Screen, camera, microphone, and shared-system-audio capture in the web and desktop clients.
• Layered multimodal memory for scenes, speech, events, and entities.
• The Hermes-compatible agent core, tools, skills, gateway, TUI, and desktop application.

Requirements

• Python 3.11–3.13
• Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+ for web and desktop builds
• ffmpeg for audio processing
• macOS screen and system-audio permissions for desktop screen sharing

Install from PyPI

python -m pip install "mm-argus[web]"
argus setup
argus

The PyPI distribution is mm-argus; the primary command is argus. Legacy hermes, hermes-agent, and hermes-acp entry points remain available for compatibility with inherited integrations.

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/Argus202608/argus.git
cd argus

uv venv --python 3.11 .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[web]"

On Windows PowerShell, activate the environment with:

.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Configuration

Secrets are never committed to the repository. Copy the public templates into your local Argus home and fill in only the providers you use:

mkdir -p ~/.argus
cp config.example.yaml ~/.argus/config.yaml
cp .env.example ~/.argus/.env

• ~/.argus/config.yaml contains behavior, model, endpoint, and multimodal settings.
• ~/.argus/.env contains API keys, tokens, and passwords only.

Run the guided setup at any time:

argus setup

Run

argus                         # Interactive CLI
argus dashboard               # Web dashboard
argus gateway                 # Messaging gateway
argus mm doctor               # Multimodal diagnostics

Desktop development

npm install
npm --workspace apps/desktop run dev

The desktop app needs macOS Screen & System Audio Recording permission to capture audio from a shared screen. After changing that permission, fully quit and restart the desktop app before sharing again.

Web development

npm install
npm --workspace web run dev

Tests

Use the repository wrapper so credentials and local Argus state are isolated:

scripts/run_tests.sh
npm --workspace apps/desktop run test:desktop

Documentation and support

• Documentation source
• Issues
• Security policy
• Contributing

License and attribution

Argus is distributed under the MIT License. It is a modified derivative of Hermes Agent by Nous Research; upstream notices and copyright statements are retained. See LICENSE for details.