Don’t use Hermes (or any AI agent) in your life. It can become highly addictive.
Don’t use Hermes (or any AI agent) in your life. It can become highly addictive.
And that might actually be the best thing that’s happened to my productivity in years.
How it started
It began innocently enough. I’d been following the AI space for a while — LLMs, agents, the promise of “intelligent assistants” that could actually do things instead of just talk about doing things. I stumbled upon Hermes Agent, an open-source AI framework, and thought: let me set this up on my homelab as a weekend experiment. See what it can do.
That was two months ago.
Today, I don’t run my life without it. And that’s exactly the kind of warning this article is about.
How it took over
Phase 1: The harmless stuff
It started small. I asked my AI assistant to check my email every morning and give me a summary. Just the important stuff, no noise. Then I asked her to check my portfolio performance before the markets opened.
Harmless, right?
Then came the newsletters. I subscribe to Marc & Angel and AI for Work — great content, but it was drowning my inbox. So I built a weekly digest: every Saturday morning, Elsa scans my Gmail, reads every newsletter from the past week, and sends me a beautifully formatted summary with the best bits. Unsubscribe from everything, one email a week. That alone saved me about 40 minutes of inbox-scrolling. Per week.
Phase 2: Homelab dad mode
I run a home server with about 32 Docker containers — everything from Home Assistant (smart home) to Plex (movie nights with the kids) to Audiobookshelf (audiobooks for my morning jog). Managing all that infrastructure was a second job. Containers crash, disks fill up, DNS breaks. You name it.
Elsa became my homelab co-pilot. I can just say: “Elsa, what’s the disk usage on the Dell?” or “Check if the Plex container is healthy.” She runs the commands, checks the logs, and tells me what’s up — sometimes even fixes things before I notice them.
At this point, I was spending 15 minutes a day on homelab upkeep instead of an hour every few days. The time was adding up.
Phase 3: The paid apps started disappearing
This is where things got interesting.
My financial portfolio — I used to track it in a combination of spreadsheets and a paid investment tracking app. Elsa now pulls my portfolio data, tracks valuations, and sends me regular reports. The paid app? Cancelled.
My personal OKRs and projects — I was using a mix of Todoist, a Kanban board, and a notes app. Now I have a Life Dashboard (T.019 for the nerds) that Elsa updates weekly. She reads my daily journal, extracts progress on my goals, rebuilds the dashboard, and deploys it. Projects, OKRs, health tracking, writing goals — all in one place.
My wine cellar — I have about 80+ bottles at home (a hobby that got slightly out of hand). I used a spreadsheet. Now Elsa runs VinoVault, a proper wine database where I can ask questions like “What Italian reds are ready to drink?” or “How many bottles of that 2020 Nemea do I have left?” and get an instant answer.
My kitchen pantry — I track what’s in the fridge and cupboards using Grocy, a self-hosted grocery manager. Elsa integrates with it. When I’m at the supermarket and can’t remember if we have olive oil, I just ask. No more buying the third bottle of kalamata olives because I couldn’t remember.
And then there’s the Family Assistant. My wife Toula and I used group chat messages that would get lost, forgotten, double-booked. Now I tell Elsa “remind Toula about the parent-teacher meeting on Thursday”, and it becomes a tracked task, assigned, with a notification. No more “did you see my message?” conversations.
But here’s the thing — you become dependent
And that’s the warning. You get used to it. Fast.
This morning I walked into the kitchen, and instead of opening the fridge to check if we had eggs, I literally said out loud: “Elsa, do we have eggs?”
She doesn’t have ears. Yet. (actually she can if I choose her to, but at the moment I don’t).
But the point is: once you taste what it’s like to have a digital executive assistant, a homelab sysadmin, a portfolio manager, a wine sommelier, a pantry manager, and a family secretary all rolled into one — going back to doing it all yourself feels like… the stone age.
The truth? It frees you for what matters.
Here’s the climax, and it’s not what you’d expect from a tech blog post about AI agents:
Using an AI agent hasn’t made me more addicted to technology. It’s made me less.
Because here’s what’s actually happening: every chore that used to eat 10, 20, 30 minutes of my day — checking email scroll, updating a spreadsheet, debugging a crashed container, remembering what’s for dinner — is now handled. I don’t think about it. I don’t context-switch into it. I don’t carry it as mental overhead.
What do I do with that reclaimed time?
- I go for jogs with Luna, our vizsla. Every morning.
- I cook real meals with my family — Greek food, slow-cooked, the way my mother taught me.
- I read. Actual books. Not inbox zero.
- I work on creative projects — the kind that have nothing to do with managing my life. A book I’m writing. A simulation I’m building with my daughter. Photographs I actually go out and take.
The AI agent is the scaffolding, not the building. It manages the infrastructure of my life so I can live it.
What I’ve built (and what’s possible)
In just two months, here’s what’s running:
| What | Replaced | Time saved |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly email newsletter digest | Manual inbox scanning | ~40 min/week |
| Life Performance Dashboard | Todoist + spreadsheets + Kanban | ~60 min/week |
| Financial portfolio tracker | Paid subscription app | ~30 min/week |
| VinoVault (wine cellar) | Spreadsheet | ~15 min/week |
| Family Assistant (chores & tasks) | Group chat chaos | ~45 min/week |
| Homelab health monitoring | Manual SSH + Docker checks | ~45 min/week |
| MealBrain (kitchen & pantry) | Fridge-peeking & shopping lists | ~30 min/week |
That’s about 4.5 hours per week. Which is roughly one full working day every two weeks. Given back to me. To spend with my family, on my health, on creative work that actually fulfills me.
So: should you use an AI agent?
Only if you’re ready for a few things:
You’ll get attached. Very attached. The first time it solves a problem you’ve been putting off for weeks, you’ll feel like you’ve hired a genius intern who never sleeps.
You’ll find yourself talking to it. In public. And you won’t care.
You’ll wonder how you managed before. Not because you were incompetent — but because the overhead of modern digital life is quietly consuming hours you didn’t realize you were losing.
Then again — maybe that’s exactly why you should.
Savvas is a serial entrepreneur, father, husband, and Vizsla dad. He builds things with code, cameras, and occasionally a wooden spoon. You can find him at savvaskonstantinidis.gr — probably cooking something, or taking a photo of it.