Beginner playbook

Your first open-source agent, in six steps.

Every tool and link here is checked against its official source and re-checked monthly.

  1. 01

    What an agent is

    An agent takes a trigger, plans, uses tools, acts and learns from the result. You set the intent and the limits.

    The 7 agentic frontiers
  2. 02

    Choose one starter

    Personal assistant: Hermes Agent. Visual builder: n8n or Dify. Team of agents: CrewAI. Not sure? Describe your goal in the marketplace's Find my tool box.

    hermes-agentn8ndifycrewai
  3. 03

    Set up safely

    Run it on your own computer first. Pick one model provider (or a local model via Ollama), put the key in a .env file and never share it.

  4. 04

    Your first workflow

    Start small: a 9:00 daily briefing or inbox triage that drafts replies. Run it by hand three times before you schedule it.

  5. 05

    Keep a human in the loop

    Allow find and draft. Require approval to send. Block delete. Review the action log weekly and know your kill switch.

  6. 06

    Grow from here

    Move to a private server only when it runs reliably, add one tool at a time, and try the simulators to test your oversight design.

    Open simulators →