Video: "Jack Dorsey's Buzz DESTROYS Hermes Agent?" by Julian Goldie on YouTube.
What Buzz is and where it came from
Buzz is a free, open-source team chat application built by Block — Jack Dorsey's company, the same one behind Square and Cash App. It looks and works like Slack: channels, direct messages, threads, reactions, file sharing. The difference is that AI agents are part of the design from day one, not bolted on afterwards.
You can add Claude Code, Codex, or any other agent to a Buzz channel the same way you would add a human team member. Tag the agent, give it a task, and it responds in the thread. There is no separate dashboard to open, no terminal to watch — the output appears where the conversation already is. Buzz is built on the Nostr protocol, which is why it is free to host and free to use.
What Julian Goldie was actually testing
The headline question — does Buzz destroy Hermes Agent? — is a bit of a false frame. The two tools do not compete directly. Buzz is a workspace. Hermes is a worker. Julian's comparison is really asking: if you have a free AI-native team chat, do you still need a persistent autonomous agent running alongside it?
Worth knowing: Julian covers Hermes extensively and has a clear preference for it. That context does not make the comparison invalid, but it does mean the "Hermes wins" conclusion at the end of most of his videos is not a surprise. Take the framing as a starting point, not a verdict.
What Buzz does well
For a team that already lives in a chat tool and wants to add AI without rebuilding their workflow, Buzz is genuinely useful. You tag an agent, assign it a task in plain English, and get the result back in the channel. That is a lower barrier than most agent setups — no API key configuration per user, no separate browser tab, no prompt engineering required beyond the initial tag.
The free model support is the other real advantage. Buzz connects to local and OpenRouter-hosted models, so you can run agents at zero API cost on something like Qwen or Ling. For a small team experimenting with AI workflow before committing to a paid model, that matters. And the phone access is practical — because Buzz is a chat app, you get a mobile interface for free, which is not something most agent setups offer without custom work.
Where Hermes still fits
Buzz responds to instructions. Hermes acts on its own. That is the real distinction. A Buzz agent waits to be tagged and given a task. Hermes can be set up to monitor a keyword feed, draft a response, check quality, and publish — all on a schedule, without anyone opening the chat app.
The two do not have to be competing choices. Julian's demo shows Hermes connected to Buzz as a resident agent in the workspace — it joins the channel, takes instructions via messages, and delivers work back in the thread. Buzz becomes the interface; Hermes is still the engine doing the autonomous heavy lifting. Three ways to connect them: Buzz Desktop auto-discovery (Hermes detects a running Buzz instance and joins it), a relay bridge for more controlled routing, or the Hermes Gateway for multi-agent setups. The Desktop method is the simplest by a margin.
Is this a practical setup for a small UK business?
Probably not for most. If your team is one or two people, a shared chat app with an AI agent in it adds a layer of coordination that solo Hermes use does not need. You are adding a human-interface layer to a tool that works fine without one.
The setup starts to make sense when there are humans who want to direct AI work without logging into an agent dashboard — a content editor who wants to tag an AI writer in a channel and get a draft back, for instance. Or a client services team that wants AI responses visible in a shared thread rather than a separate tool. That is the use case Buzz is genuinely designed for, and it does that job well.
The API cost question is worth checking before you deploy anything at scale. Running free models through Buzz is zero-cost, but the quality ceiling is lower than Sonnet or Opus. If the work requires a paid model, Buzz does not change that equation — the API bills land either way.
Where this connects to NordSys
We configure AI agent stacks for businesses — whether that is Hermes running standalone, connected to a team chat like Buzz, or integrated into a larger multi-agent workflow. The right setup depends on how your team actually works, not on which tool has the most impressive demo. If you want an honest view of whether Buzz, Hermes, or something else fits your situation, our AI Agents service is the place to start. From £6 a day.
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