Claude-code — Connect to Hermes

Connect Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI coding tool) to a NousResearch Hermes model via an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint (Ollama, Together AI, OpenRouter, etc.).

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Ollama (local)

# Install Ollama: https://ollama.com/download
ollama serve
ollama pull NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B

Remote / cloud provider
Set HERMES_API_BASE_URL and HERMES_API_KEY to point at your provider's OpenAI-compatible endpoint before running the setup script.

# Default: Ollama on localhost:11434
bash setup.sh

# Custom endpoint
HERMES_API_BASE_URL=https://api.example.com/v1 \
HERMES_API_KEY=sk-your-key \
HERMES_MODEL=NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-70B \
bash setup.sh

The script will:

• Verify that the Claude Code CLI is installed
• Pull the Hermes model via Ollama (if Ollama is available)
• Test connectivity to the API endpoint
• Write a .env.hermes file with the required environment variables

source .env.hermes
claude --model NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B

Claude Code reads ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY to connect to custom endpoints. The setup script sets both automatically.

The .claude/settings.json file in this repository provides a reference configuration for the Claude Code project settings.

.
├── .claude/
│   └── settings.json   # Claude Code project configuration
├── setup.sh            # One-shot setup script
└── README.md