Work While PC Is Off

19.2. Work While PC Is Off — Why the VPS Model Exists

This is the core reason for the VPS model described in chapter 1.

Because Hermes lives on a $5 VPS or serverless infrastructure (Daytona, Modal) — not tied to your laptop — turning off your personal computer does not affect the agent at all. You can text via Telegram while it runs on a cloud VM you do not even need to SSH into.

Cron jobs still run on schedule

Scheduled jobs (daily reports, nightly backups, weekly audits — covered in 17.4) keep running on time even when nobody has any interface open at all — and this is only true when Hermes runs on always-on infrastructure, not on a personal machine.

Notes

• This is the most important reason to invest properly in chapters 1–2 (VPS + Installation) instead of running Hermes on your laptop because it is “convenient at first” — the “work while your PC is off” benefit only exists when the infrastructure is properly always-on.
• If a cron job is not running on schedule despite being configured, the first thing to check is whether the gateway service is actually running 24/7 on the VPS (2.6/2.4) — not the cron configuration itself.