2026-07-16

Hermes Agent Hackathon Winners: Custodian, Mom-n-Pop Skills, CashFromChaos

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Nous Research announced the winners of the Accelerated Business Hackathon, co-sponsored by NVIDIA and Stripe. The prompt: build agents that can earn, spend, and run real operations at any scale. 292 teams submitted. Three won.

For our Accelerated Business Hackathon with @NVIDIAAI and @stripe, we asked builders to make agents that can earn, spend, and run real operations at any scale.

We judged 292 excellent submissions alongside our sponsors, and the results show what Hermes Agent is capable of when builders treat it as infrastructure rather than a chatbot.
— Nous Research (@NousResearch) July 15, 2026

Custodian: A Kernel for Agent Spending

First place went to Custodian, by Daniel LaForce. Custodian is a kernel that sits between an agent and the outside world. When an agent can spend money, something external has to decide what it is allowed to do. Custodian provides that guardrail. It is not a chatbot add-on - it runs as infrastructure.

🥇 1st place: Custodian, by Daniel LaForce (@MHArgonaut)

When an agent can spend money, something external to the agent has to decide what it is allowed to do. Custodian is a kernel that runs between the agent and every payment, enforcing rules before money moves.
— Nous Research (@NousResearch) July 15, 2026

Mom-n-Pop Skills: Built for Parents, Not Investors

Second place went to Mom-n-Pop Skills, by Scott Hewitson. Scott built it for his mom and stepdad, who are in their 60s and run a service business with no CRM and hours of manual paperwork every day. The agent handles scheduling, invoicing, and customer follow-up - the operational work that eats evenings. It was not built for a demo. It was built for two people who needed it.

🥈 2nd place: Mom-n-Pop Skills, by Scott Hewitson (@Hewi333)

Scott built this for his mom and stepdad, who are in their 60s and run a service business with no CRM and hours of manual paperwork every day. Hermes Agent now handles it.
— Nous Research (@NousResearch) July 15, 2026

CashFromChaos: Photo to Sale, One-Line Clue

Third place went to CashFromChaos, by David Diaz. You send a photo and a one-line clue, and Hermes Agent automates everything up to a completed sale. The agent researches the item, writes the listing, publishes it, and handles the transaction. It starts from a single seller input and finishes at a closed deal.

🥉 3rd place: CashFromChaos, by David Diaz (@davddiazm)

CashFromChaos starts from a single seller input and automates everything up until a completed sale. You send a photo and a one-line clue, and Hermes Agent researches, lists, and closes.
— Nous Research (@NousResearch) July 15, 2026

Community: Raft 1.0 and Local GPU Servers

Beyond the hackathon, the community shipped two notable builds this week.

Teknium announced full Hermes Agent support in Raft 1.0, the platform formerly known as Slock. The announcement hit 154 likes and 72 bookmarks - a 0.47 bookmark-to-like ratio that signals strong operator interest. Raft lets you run Hermes Agent deployments with persistence and monitoring built in.

Hermes Agent is fully supported in Raft 1.0 (Previously Slock) - Give it a try! https://t.co/oRQsOE9M4x
— Teknium 🪽 (@Teknium) July 16, 2026

marfinxx highlighted a 24-year-old developer who built a $220,000 8-GPU local server running Hermes Agent to cut B2B cloud costs. The rig pools 768GB of dedicated VRAM across eight enterprise GPUs. At 10 bookmarks on 18 likes, the operator audience recognised the architecture as worth revisiting.

A 24-YEAR-OLD DEV BUILT A $220,000 8-GPU LOCAL SERVER RUNNING HERMES AGENT TO CUT B2B CLOUD COSTS

00:35 He slides eight enterprise GPUs into the server chassis to pool 768GB of dedicated VRAM

Large enterprises b
— marfinxx (@marfinxx) July 16, 2026

Also spotted: mersad built a Proton Pass plugin for Hermes Agent, ivanfioravanti documented a local AI lab setup driven by Hermes automatic skill creation, and LouieMota88 wired Grok OAuth into Hermes to give it native X eyes while keeping Codex as the operator.

The hackathon results confirm a pattern: the winning agents were not chatbots. They were infrastructure that handled money, scheduled real work, and closed sales. Custodian ran between the agent and the payment. Mom-n-Pop Skills ran between the agent and the small business. CashFromChaos ran between the photo and the sale. Each winner answered the same question: what sits between the agent and the outcome.

[^1]: Nous Research. "For our Accelerated Business Hackathon." X. July 15, 2026. https://x.com/NousResearch/status/2077517414464410091

[^2]: Nous Research. "1st place: Custodian." X. July 15, 2026. https://x.com/NousResearch/status/2077517417425543632

[^3]: Nous Research. "2nd place: Mom-n-Pop Skills." X. July 15, 2026. https://x.com/NousResearch/status/2077517421150118214

[^4]: Nous Research. "3rd place: CashFromChaos." X. July 15, 2026. https://x.com/NousResearch/status/2077517426980176223

[^5]: Teknium. "Hermes Agent is fully supported in Raft 1.0." X. July 16, 2026. https://x.com/Teknium/status/2077652316547932536

[^6]: marfinxx. "24-year-old dev builds $220K 8-GPU local server." X. July 16, 2026. https://x.com/marfinxx/status/2077698727741915264