Hermes Cua Spaces Plugin: Setup, Desktop Support and Limits

Nous Research announced a Cua Spaces plugin for Hermes on October 22, giving the agent a separate computer that people can watch and use alongside it. The practical benefit is keeping agent work off your everyday desktop. The important limitation is that terminal isolation and desktop isolation have different requirements.

What the Hermes integration changes

The Nous announcement describes Linux, macOS and Windows Spaces on hardware you already own, with live viewing and human takeover. This is a Hermes integration, not a new launch of the underlying Cua Spaces SDK.

The catalog dates the plugin to October 20, updated October 21. Terminal, file and code tools move into the Space; Hermes stays outside.

That separation is useful when an agent needs to install dependencies or change files for a task. A developer can keep their usual work environment separate from the environment being modified. It also gives a teammate somewhere specific to inspect a failed run instead of reconstructing it from a chat transcript.

Setup and the Linux desktop requirement

The documented configuration uses:

hermes plugins install cua-spaces
hermes config set terminal.backend cua

Install Cua first. Browser tools, computer_use and Bot Desktop require Linux Spaces, Hermes 0.22.3+, Cua CLI 0.7.0+ and an installed desktop stack to run inside the Space.

With macOS or Windows Spaces, desktop and browser tools remain on the host.

Before giving the agent a real task, check both the terminal's machine identity and the desktop it can see. A successful command in the Space does not prove that a subsequent browser action will happen there. This is especially important if your host browser contains work accounts unrelated to the task.

What happens when a session ends?

New Spaces are deleted on exit unless delete_on_exit is changed; named existing Spaces remain. Disposable Spaces skip Hermes's risky-command prompts; named Spaces retain them.

These are settings to review before a run, not details to discover after it. Use a disposable environment for an experiment whose outputs you can explicitly collect. A persistent environment is more appropriate when the next session needs installed tools or unfinished work, but it also carries yesterday's state into tomorrow's task.

Cua Spaces pricing and hosting

Cua's pricing page lists Free access with two live sessions and 20 remote hours monthly. Pro costs $18 monthly, while Teams costs $30 per seat monthly; annual billing has lower monthly equivalents. Cua defines remote hours as using your computers from elsewhere. Its Windows download is labeled a preview.

The company says it does not rent out the computers. Spaces use your hardware or machines in your own cloud account, with cloud infrastructure billed separately. The free sharing allowance therefore should not be mistaken for free hosted compute or free model inference.

For a team, the useful comparison is the total cost of completing a task: model usage, the machine running it and any sharing service. The plugin changes where tools execute. It does not by itself establish that a task will be cheaper or more reliable.

The strongest reason to try this integration is a clearer working boundary: a task-specific environment, a visible desktop and a person who can step in. Verify that boundary for the tools you actually use before treating the setup as isolated.

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