Run Your Hermes Agent on Free LFM2.5-2.6B via OpenRouter

Melvin Vivas · X post · 2026-08-21 · Open on X

Topics: AI Agents, Tool Use & MCP, LLM Fundamentals · Level: beginner

Summary

LFM2.5-2.6B, a small model, is free on OpenRouter with good throughput. Melvin suggests pointing your Hermes agent harness at it to run agents for free.

Key points

• LFM2.5-2.6B is free on OpenRouter and has good throughput.
• Small free models can power an agentic harness at no cost.
• Configure Hermes (or any harness) to use this model through OpenRouter.

Resources mentioned

• LFM2.5-2.6B · tool · huggingface.co · free
  Liquid AI's small language model, which can be paired with the LFM2.5-VL-3B vision model.
  Also in: Coworker: Open-Source Work Agent That Runs on Small Local Models (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Coworker with Liquid AI LFM2.5-2.6B via LM Studio on a Mac (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Zero-Cost Coworker Setup: OpenRouter Free Models + Local LFM2.5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Coworker: A Subscription-Free AI Agent on Local LFM2.5-2.6B (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 9 more
• OpenRouter · tool · openrouter.ai · free
  A single OpenAI-compatible API that routes requests to hundreds of models from many providers, with one bill and model fallbacks.
  Also in: Customizing Your Coding Setup with Pi Coding Agent Extensions (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), The Jev model is now on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Kev-4B model, an alternative to Jev, now available on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Space Bunny Alpha: stealth 1M-context flash model on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 42 more
• Hermes Agent · tool · github.com · free
  Nous Research's open-source AI agent with CLI, TUI and desktop interfaces. It now supports hands-free activation with a wake word.
  Also in: Inspecting Coding-Agent Traces Live with JSONL Viewer (Codex, Claude Code) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Hermes Agent: each bot is its own profile (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), An X research bot built with Hermes (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Running a Local Ornith Model as the Backend for a Hermes Agent (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 55 more

Try this

• Point your Hermes agent at the free LFM2.5-2.6B model on OpenRouter.