Get Hermes + Telegram on Your $0 Cloud VM (Part 2)

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Last week, I walked through setting up a $0 cloud VM you can SSH into from your laptop. This is part 2 on installing Hermes on your VM and hooking it up to Telegram.

By the end you’ll have $0 Hermes running 24/7 on your VM. You can text it on Telegram and SSH in from your laptop for setup and debugging.

This post walks through that in 4 steps. I’d budget ~1 hour for this part of the setup. Here’s what this guide covers:

1. Install Hermes on the VM (free-tier provider choices)

2. Wire Telegram and keep the VM running after you close your laptop.

3. Set persona files (SOUL, MEMORY, USER) that define how the bot behaves

4. Install skills and an optional cron job (the example is a weekly AI-trends brief)

If you skipped part 1, start here. Otherwise, let’s get started!

Note: AI Weekender has moved. New posts are published at ai-weekender.com, and this Substack is now an archive.

To keep receiving weekly issues, please subscribe at ai-weekender.com instead of here.