Onyx: I Built an Hermes Agent That Runs My Entire Server While I Sleep

This is a submission for the Hermes Agent Challenge What I Built Onyx is an autonomous infrastructure operator running 24/7 on my droplet. He manages my entire stack: 6 Next.js deployments, 5 Docker containers, a Minecraft server, fail2ban, Nginx, and UFW. He also helps me write my undergraduate thesis. The difference from every other "AI agent" project I've seen: Onyx doesn't wait for commands. He surfaces problems, patches vulnerabilities, and pushes work forward on his own. When I wake up, there's a session log waiting for me, not a to-do list. The core idea: graduate an AI agent from assistant to operator . A chatbot with tools bolted on doesn't cut it. I wanted something that runs infrastructure while I'm eating dinner, asleep, or in class. Demo Onyx operates through Discord. A normal week: 🔴 3 AM — gateway process failure, no wake-up required A gateway process had a stale PID. Onyx detected it, diagnosed the root cause, restarted it cleanly, and wrote a session log. I found out in the morning. Zero human intervention, zero downtime. 🟡 Dinner — 9 CVEs found across Docker containers While I was eating, Onyx ran a routine audit, found 9 CVEs, rebuilt 3 container images from fresh base images, patched Python dependencies, hardened fail2ban (ban time: 600s to 24 hours), and verified every container came back healthy. 🟢 "Fix it" — two words, full tunneling deployment My friends in Indonesia couldn't connect to the Minecraft server because their ISPs use carrier-grade NAT. I sent Onyx "fix it." He researched solutions, selected playit.gg, installed the tunneling agent, configured a systemd service, and optimized TCP keepalive parameters. All autonomous. 🧠 Accountability loop Onyx noticed I kept asking for things but not acting on the output. He surfaced it: "You keep opening new loops and not closing them." He was right. Now when I open a loop, Onyx tracks it until it's closed or explicitly shelved. 📚 Thesis research partner I'm finishing my undergraduate thesis on e