Handle a personal mailbox daily with a local model
The poster runs Hermes with free local models via Ollama on their own GPU, using a daily cron job to process their personal mailbox.
Done withHermes Agent
- What they did
- In the thread, the concrete mailbox example appears in a comment, not the main post. The commenter says they switched Hermes to a different base model with very clear requirements, worked closely with Claude Code to build the setup, and now runs it daily as a cron job to GTD their personal mailbox; they also mention using an MCP server built via Claude Code, with the person shaping requirements and development.
- How it went
- The reported result is simply that it worked well enough for daily use on their personal mailbox and they were extending it to travel. The same commenter says they see Hermes more as a chat or operational agent than a development agent.
- Worth knowing
- The main catch is model choice and setup effort: the thread frames free local Ollama models as fine for simple cron-job automations, but not for heavy coding, and says going local takes a lot of configuration.
Try it yourself with Hermes Agent
Set up a daily job that runs at [time, e.g. 7am] and goes through my personal mailbox at [email provider/account], using my local model through [Ollama model name]. Sort new messages into [categories, e.g. needs reply, newsletters, receipts, junk], and write me a short digest of what needs my attention along with draft replies for anything urgent. Do not send, delete, or archive anything without showing me the list first and getting my approval. The job is done when I have a working daily schedule and one sample digest to review.
Want help getting this working? Join the Vibe Coding Academy ↗ Run by Alex Finn, who also runs this site.
Source: Reddit · Sep 1, 2026
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