Why three frameworks, not one
Over the last two years of deploying autonomous agents for clients, we noticed a pattern: three fundamentally different kinds of agents kept showing up, and trying to build them all on one framework compromised every use case.
General-purpose task agents (research, document processing, triage) have different architectural needs than conversational agents handling a live customer chat. And both have different operational demands than white-glove managed deployments where the client wants outcomes, not infrastructure.
So we built three. Each is opinionated for its job. The choice between them is almost always obvious once you understand the decision you're making.
OpenClaw — the developer-led framework
OpenClaw is for teams that want to own the agent the way they'd own any other piece of core infrastructure. Engineers in the room, code in the repo, customization by hand.
We build OpenClaw agents alongside your team during the engagement, leave you with clean documentation and runbooks, and step back. You own everything — the prompts, the tools, the guardrails, the deployment pipeline.
- Deploys on your infrastructure (Vercel, AWS, GCP, or on-prem)
- Python + TypeScript codebase with modular tool registry
- Model-agnostic — Claude, GPT, Gemini, or local models
- Comes with budget caps, permission tiers, approval checkpoints, audit logs
- Ongoing tuning available as a retainer if you want it; optional, not required
Right fit when
You have at least one engineer who will maintain the agent long-term, and you want full code ownership with no ongoing vendor dependency.
NemoClaw — the managed service
NemoClaw is the opposite philosophy: you want outcomes, we handle everything. Agents running in our infrastructure, tuned by our team, monitored around the clock.
Business teams love NemoClaw because they don't need to hire an AI engineer. You describe the workflow, we ship the agent, and you get weekly or monthly reports on what it did and what it saved.
- We host, scale, and monitor the agent on managed infrastructure
- Prebuilt templates for common workflows (research briefings, ticket triage, sales enrichment, content ops)
- White-glove setup: 1-2 weeks from kickoff to first production run
- Dashboards + weekly summaries for non-technical stakeholders
- Priority support + model upgrades handled by our team
Right fit when
You don't have engineers you want to dedicate to agent maintenance, your timeline is short, or you'd rather pay for results than manage infrastructure.
Hermes — the real-time communication agent
Hermes is named for the messenger of the Greek gods, and that's exactly what it does: live, real-time interaction across chat, SMS, email, voice, and internal messaging platforms. Hermes is an autonomous agent tuned specifically for conversations with humans — not back-office task work.
OpenClaw and NemoClaw can handle a ticket after it's opened. Hermes handles the customer who's typing into the chat widget right now, at 2 AM, on a mobile screen, frustrated — and decides whether to answer, escalate, draft a ticket, or book a meeting.
- Sub-second response times on conversational turns
- Retrieval-augmented generation over your docs, knowledge base, and CRM
- Tone and brand voice tuning as part of deployment — Hermes doesn't sound like a chatbot
- Multi-channel: website widget, WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, Teams, email, voice (via Twilio or similar)
- Handoff protocols to humans with full context — no "start from the beginning" frustration
- Built-in guardrails for refunds, promises, and policy-sensitive conversations
Right fit when
Your agent needs to talk to humans in real time — customers on your website, leads in your pipeline, employees in internal Slack, or prospects via SMS campaigns.
Side-by-side
Three decisions usually make the choice obvious:
- Who will own it long-term? Your engineers → OpenClaw. Us → NemoClaw. A support/comms team → Hermes.
- What does the agent do? Multi-step task work → OpenClaw or NemoClaw. Talk to humans live → Hermes.
- How fast does it need to ship? 8+ weeks with engineering investment → OpenClaw. 2-4 weeks white-glove → NemoClaw. 3-6 weeks for conversational → Hermes.
Using two (or three) together
Many of our clients end up with a combination:
- Hermes handles live customer chat on the website + in Slack for support. When an issue escalates, Hermes hands off to a human with full context.
- NemoClaw runs the back-office work: nightly research briefings, morning sales lead enrichment, weekly competitive monitoring. Zero infrastructure overhead.
- OpenClaw powers a custom internal workflow the engineering team built around proprietary data that can't leave the firewall.
The three frameworks share enough architecture that data flows between them cleanly — a Hermes handoff can create a NemoClaw ticket, and an OpenClaw alert can trigger a Hermes notification. They're built to compose.
How engagements typically start
Most engagements start with a 30-minute scoping call. We ask what workflow or conversation you want to automate, what success looks like (usually in terms of time saved, response rate, or qualified output volume), and what data the agent needs to see.
By the end of that call, we know which framework fits. Often it's clear in the first five minutes.