DevBrief — AI Standup Writer Powered by Hermes Agent (Vercel + Render)

This is a submission for the Hermes Agent Challenge

Live app: https://devbrief-tau.vercel.app

Repo: github.com/sundayonah/devbrief

Hermes health: devbrief-hermes.onrender.com/health

Setup guide: How I connected Hermes to Next.js

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What I Built

DevBrief turns GitHub activity into human-readable standups, PR changelogs, or work logs. Any visitor can sign in with GitHub OAuth, pick a repo, set a time range and branch, filter PRs and authors, choose a tone (casual / formal / concise), and hit Generate.

The Next.js app does not call OpenRouter directly. It fetches commits, PRs, and issues from GitHub, then calls Hermes Agent’s OpenAI-compatible API (POST /v1/chat/completions) on a long-running gateway. Hermes runs the agent loop (skills, tools, server-side model config) and returns the final brief.

Architecture:

Users → DevBrief (Vercel)
            ↓  POST /api/summary → lib/hermes.ts
      Hermes gateway (Docker on Render)
            ↓  model: openrouter/owl-alpha
      OpenRouter (API key only on Hermes — not on Vercel)

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Demo

Try it:

1. Open devbrief-tau.vercel.app
2. Connect GitHub → select a repo → choose output mode and tone → Generate
3. Confirm Hermes is up: https://devbrief-hermes.onrender.com/health

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Code

Repository: github.com/sundayonah/devbrief

Piece	Location
Hermes client	lib/hermes.ts → HERMES_ENDPOINT + POST /v1/chat/completions
Summary API	app/api/summary/route.ts
Standup skill	hermes-skills/standup-writer.md
Hermes Docker image	docker/hermes/Dockerfile
Production model config	docker/hermes/config.yaml (openrouter/owl-alpha, max_tokens: 2048)
Deploy guide	docs/DEPLOYMENT.md

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My Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Next.js 14 (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
Auth & GitHub	NextAuth.js, Octokit, GitHub OAuth
AI agent	Hermes Agent — hermes gateway run + API server
Model	openrouter/owl-alpha via OpenRouter (on Hermes host only)
App hosting	Vercel
Agent hosting	Docker on Render

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How I Used Hermes Agent

Hermes is not a chatbot wrapper here — the gateway is the brain for every generation.

Hermes capability	How DevBrief uses it
API server	API_SERVER_ENABLED=true; Next.js calls /v1/chat/completions server-side (no browser CORS)
Gateway	hermes gateway run in Docker on Render — not inside Vercel serverless
Skills	standup-writer.md copied to /root/.hermes/skills/ in the image
Server model config	docker/hermes/config.yaml sets model.default: openrouter/owl-alpha (request model field is not what drives inference)
OpenRouter	OPENROUTER_API_KEY on Render only — not in Vercel env
Auth	API_SERVER_KEY on Render ↔ HERMES_API_KEY on Vercel
Cron / messaging	hermes schedule documented as a next step in the UI; Slack/Telegram delivery disabled in current deploy

Request flow:

POST /api/summary
  → GitHub API (user OAuth token)
  → generateBrief() in lib/hermes.ts
  → Hermes POST /v1/chat/completions
  → standup / PR changelog / work log
  → UI (copy, edit, history)

The long setup story (WSL PATH, duplicate .env keys, 127.0.0.1 vs localhost, OpenRouter 402, baking config.yaml for Render) is in the tutorial post.

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What I learned

• Start the gateway, hit /health, then /v1/chat/completions before wiring the app.
• Hermes reads ~/.hermes/config.yaml for the real model — env vars and JSON model alone were not enough on Render until we shipped docker/hermes/config.yaml.
• Split hosting: serverless Next.js + long-running Hermes elsewhere is the right pattern for this challenge.

Thanks for reading — try the live demo and leave a comment if you hit snags with Hermes on Render or Vercel.

Comments

[Anguishe]

I've been wanting to use some coding agents lately. I've only used regular Claude AI and Cursor Pro agents so far. This is definitely some good info to get me started. Thank you!

[Onah Sunday.]

thanks.