bighelp

bighelp is an app for your personal AI agents that run on Hermes. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro, and it makes work with your agents feel like texting a friend.

Get it

• iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro: bighelp on the App Store.

• Mac: download the DMG from the latest Mac release. The Mac app updates itself.

• The bighelp plugin for your Hermes computer: the app offers to install it during setup, and in Settings. You can also install it yourself:

  hermes plugins install promptclickrun/bighelp-plugin --enable

What it does

• Three ways to use it. You choose one at the end of setup, and you can change it later in Settings:
  • Bots: a calm home with only your bots, like a messaging app.
  • Sessions: the full app, with every chat, tool and setting.
  • Code (Bighelp IDE): each message starts a coding session in its own worktree. Then you look at the changes and ship them.
• Chat with one agent, or with a group of agents, also agents on your other computers. Replies stream in live. You can react to messages, see the agent's reasoning and tool use, and send files and photos.
• Agents that you make from templates, or save as templates. Each agent has an avatar from the catalog or your own design, and a profile with its files and media.
• Approvals and questions, so an agent asks before it acts.
• Feed, Ideas and Goals. Your agent fills them, but only after you ask it to.
• Projects, Kanban, Workflows and Scheduled tasks for longer work, and Usage for your AI plans and limits.
• Voice: talk in turns, or live.
• Apps: connect apps for your agents through Composio or Hermes' own connectors (Settings › Apps).
• Device tools: let agents use Health, Calendar, Reminders and Location. Each one is off until you turn it on.
• Several computers: see the agents of all your computers in one list.
• Notifications, Live Activities, widgets, Shortcuts and an Apple Watch app.
• Apple Vision Pro: your agent can stand in the room with you, in 3D.
• Themes with light and dark modes, and Nerd Mode for host tools such as files, plugins, MCP and logs.

How it works

• The app connects directly to the Hermes host that you run, over your home network, Tailscale or HTTPS. Use one address that your devices can reach from all places, for example your Tailscale name or an HTTPS domain. The app signs in with Hermes' own login.
• There is no bighelp account. Your chats go only between your devices and your host, and to the AI providers that your host uses.
• The app does not check the Hermes version. It checks what the host can do, and it shows a message when a feature needs something that the host does not have.
• The bighelp plugin adds the extras: notifications, Feed, Ideas and Goals, cards, live voice, Teamwork, files and media from your agents, your own templates, device tools, and chats that stay open when your phone sleeps. When a feature needs a newer plugin, the app tells you and offers the update.
• bighelp's notification service sends push notifications and Live Activities through BuzzKit.
• Sign-in details stay in the Keychain on your device. The app has no ads and no analytics.
• Hermes behind Cloudflare Access, a password proxy, or a proxy that checks its own headers (for example Pangolin) also works. See docs/HOST_ACCESS.md.

Build it yourself

You need a Mac with a current Xcode (Swift 6) and XcodeGen. The app needs iOS 17 or later, or visionOS 26 or later. The Mac app is the iPad app through Mac Catalyst.

brew install xcodegen
cp Config/Local.xcconfig.example Config/Local.xcconfig   # add your Apple Team ID
xcodegen generate
open Bighelp.xcodeproj

Schemes:

Scheme	Builds
Bighelp	iPhone and iPad, with the widgets and the notification extension
BighelpCatalyst	Mac (Mac Catalyst)
BighelpVision	Apple Vision Pro
BighelpWatch	Apple Watch

The app was first called Loopdy, so some stored names (bundle IDs, settings keys, the plugin's loopdy ID) still use that name. Config/Local.xcconfig is git-ignored. Simulator builds work with it empty. To run on a real device, change the bundle IDs and app groups in project.yml to ones that your Apple team owns.

No Hermes host? Add these launch arguments to the scheme to use sample data:

-use-demo-fixtures
-disable-demo-delays

Run the Mac app on sample data: Scripts/mac-dev-run.sh --name <your name>.

Tests (use an iPhone simulator that your Xcode has):

xcodebuild test -project Bighelp.xcodeproj -scheme Bighelp \
  -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 18 Pro'

What's where

Path	What it is
Bighelp/	The app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro
BighelpWatch/, BighelpWatchShared/	The Apple Watch app
BighelpLiveActivity/, BighelpActivityShared/	Widgets and Live Activities
BighelpNotificationService/	The notification service extension
BighelpMacUpdater/	The Mac app's updates (Sparkle)
BighelpTests/, BighelpUITests/, BighelpVisionUITests/, BighelpWatchUITests/	Tests
BighelpMac/, BighelpMacTests/	An early desktop prototype on sample data. It is not the Mac app.
services/	Cloudflare Workers: the notification service, the template and avatar catalogs, and the provider logos
Scripts/	Tests against real Hermes hosts, the Mac release, and other tools
Design/AvatarKit/	Avatar artwork and the tools that export it
docs/	Contracts and deep dives

DESIGN.md describes the look and feel. AGENTS.md is the guide for people and AI agents that work on the code.

For an Android or other client port, start with the platform-neutral Hermes transport contract, including API references, recovery rules and portable conformance vectors.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. The maintainer reviews every change before it merges. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Please report security problems privately, as SECURITY.md describes.

License

Apache 2.0. Bundled third-party code keeps its own license: BuzzKit (MIT), ThinkingOrbsKit (MIT), Sparkle (MIT), Noto Sans (SIL Open Font License) and WebRTC (BSD 3-Clause; the Apple Vision Pro build uses LiveKit's build of WebRTC). Provider logos belong to their owners and only identify those providers.