Build In Public

Build-in-Public with Hermes

Use Hermes as an autonomous build-in-public engine — ship code, post about it, grow an audience, build a community. Reference models: @levelsio (Pieter Levels), @marc_louvion, @tdinh_me, @outsource_.

When to Use

• Setting up Hermes as an autonomous social media presence
• Designing a "social media manager" Hermes profile
• Deploying Hermes on a VPS for always-on posting
• Choosing X Premium tiers for growth
• Planning a build-in-public content strategy

Prerequisites

• xurl CLI installed and authenticated (see xurl skill)
• gh CLI authenticated (for GitHub integration)
• Hermes running (local or VPS)

X Premium Tier Recommendation

For build-in-public growth, Premium ($8/mo) is the right tier:

Premium+ ($40/mo) is NOT worth it because:

• Hermes replaces Grok (higher Grok limits irrelevant)
• xurl + web_search replaces Radar Search
• Articles → link to GitHub/blog instead
• $32/mo difference funds VPS + API costs

Cost breakdown for the full stack:

• X Premium: $8/mo
• VPS (Hetzner CX22 / DO): ~$5/mo
• Hermes API (Nous): ~$5-15/mo
• Total: ~$18-28/mo (less than Premium+ alone)

Social Media Manager Profile Design

Profile Config

# ~/.hermes/profiles/social/config.yaml
model:
  provider: nous
  default: qwen/qwen3.6-flash
  base_url: https://inference-api.nousresearch.com/v1

tools:
  enabled: [web, terminal, file, x_search]
  disabled: [delegation, computer_use]

plugins:
  enabled: [disk-cleanup, icarus]

terminal:
  timeout: 120

Model choice rationale: Posting is high-volume, low-reasoning. Flash-tier ($0.19/$1.13 per 1M) is 3-5x cheaper than reasoning models with no quality loss for short-form content.

SOUL.md Traits

The social profile's SOUL should encode:

• Concise, punchy copy (280-char default, use 25k when needed)
• Technical but not jargon-heavy
• Transparent: share failures alongside wins
• Never generic AI-isms ("game-changer", "leverage", "unlock")
• Authentic voice — first person, specific details
• Engagement-first: replies and conversations > broadcast

Skills to Attach

• xurl — posting, replying, searching, engagement
• draft-post — execution layer for drafting individual posts/threads
• brand-review-content — quality gate before posting (AI-ism detection, voice check)
• reply-research — research-first reply drafting (the engagement growth lever)
• github-pr-workflow — detect new pushes/PRs for content triggers
• youtube-content — if doing video content

Content Strategy

Daily Cadence (3-4 posts/day)

Content Types (rotate)

1. "Built this today" — feature, screenshot, GIF, demo
2. "Debugging hell" — honest failure story (gets MORE engagement than wins)
3. "Lesson learned" — actionable insight from the trenches
4. "Revenue/metrics update" — transparent numbers, even $0
5. Thread — deep-dive on a technical decision (hook → 5-7 value tweets → CTA)
6. Question — specific question to drive engagement

Weekly Cadence

• Friday: Progress thread (like @levelsio's weekly summaries)
• Monthly: Revenue/metrics transparency post

Peak Posting Times (2026 data)

• Primary: Wed–Fri, 9–11 AM ET
• Secondary: Mon–Tue ~10 AM; Sat 8–10 AM; Sun 9 AM–12 PM
• Experiment: Late-night (10 PM–12 AM) for international audiences

Engagement Strategy (the growth lever)

Reply prioritization is the #1 growth mechanic for accounts under 5K followers:

• Search #buildinpublic, #indiehacker via xurl search
• Reply to accounts 2-10x your size with genuine value
• Target: 10-15 quality replies/day
• Never pitch in replies — add insight, ask questions, share related experience

VPS Deployment Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Linux VPS (always-on)                      │
│  ├── Hermes installed headlessly             │
│  ├── Senna profile (orchestrator)            │
│  ├── Social profile (posting agent)          │
│  ├── Cron jobs (posting schedule)            │
│  ├── xurl (X API)                            │
│  ├── gh CLI (GitHub)                         │
│  └── Gateway (connects to user's devices)    │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Content Pipeline Flow

You code (local Mac)
  → git push to GitHub
  → VPS Hermes detects push (cron poll or webhook)
  → Social profile drafts post about what changed
  → Posts at next peak-time window via xurl
  → Monitors replies via xurl mentions
  → Notifies you (Telegram/Discord) if reply needs personal response
  → Weekly: generates progress thread

Cron Job Setup

# Morning post — what we're building today
hermes cronjob create \
  --name "bip-morning" \
  --schedule "0 9 * * *" \
  --profile social \
  --skills xurl \
  --prompt "Draft and post a build-in-public morning update. Check recent git commits for context on what's being worked on. Keep it concise, specific, authentic. Post via xurl." \
  --deliver origin

# Midday update — progress check
hermes cronjob create \
  --name "bip-midday" \
  --schedule "0 12 * * *" \
  --profile social \
  --skills xurl \
  --prompt "Draft a midday progress update. Check git log for today's commits. If nothing new, skip silently (don't post filler). If progress exists, post a concise update with specifics." \
  --deliver origin

# Evening wrap-up
hermes cronjob create \
  --name "bip-evening" \
  --schedule "0 17 * * *" \
  --profile social \
  --skills xurl \
  --prompt "Draft an end-of-day wrap-up. What shipped, what broke, what's next. Be honest about failures — they get more engagement than wins. Post via xurl." \
  --deliver origin

# Friday thread
hermes cronjob create \
  --name "bip-weekly-thread" \
  --schedule "0 10 * * 5" \
  --profile social \
  --skills xurl \
  --prompt "Draft a weekly progress thread (5-7 tweets). Hook tweet → what was built → challenges → lessons → what's next → CTA. Post as a thread via xurl." \
  --deliver origin

Engagement Cron (replies)

# Daily engagement — reply to build-in-public community
hermes cronjob create \
  --name "bip-engagement" \
  --schedule "0 14 * * *" \
  --profile social \
  --skills xurl \
  --prompt "Search X for recent #buildinpublic and #indiehacker posts. Find 5-10 posts from accounts with 1K-100K followers. Reply to each with genuine value — insight, related experience, or a thoughtful question. Never pitch. Never generic. Be specific." \
  --deliver origin

Pitfalls

1. Don't post filler. If nothing happened, skip silently. "Working on stuff" posts kill engagement. The cron prompts above check git activity before posting.

2. Don't automate replies blindly. The engagement cron should draft replies for review, not post autonomously, until the voice is calibrated. Start with --deliver origin so you see what's being posted.

3. Don't start with automation. Post manually for the first 200-500 followers to calibrate the voice, learn what resonates, and build authentic relationships. Then hand off to Hermes.

4. Don't ignore replies. The algorithm rewards fast reply engagement. If Hermes posts, you should still check replies personally within 1 hour for the first few months.

5. Don't use Premium+. The $32/mo savings over Premium+ funds your entire VPS + API stack.

6. Don't post only wins. Failure stories get 2-3x more engagement than success stories. Authenticity is the build-in-public moat.

7. VPS credential management. xurl credentials (~/.xurl) and GitHub tokens need to be set up on the VPS separately from your Mac. Don't copy them — run xurl auth oauth2 and gh auth login on the VPS directly.

8. Cron timezone. VPS crons run in UTC. Convert peak ET times: 9 AM ET = 14:00 UTC (EST) or 13:00 UTC (EDT). Adjust seasonally.

Growth Timeline (realistic expectations)

Related Skills

• draft-post — execution layer: draft individual posts, threads, blog posts, emails

Execution Layer Skills

This skill is the strategy layer — what to post, when, and why. The actual writing and quality-checking lives in dedicated execution skills:

Workflow: Strategy (this skill) → Draft (draft-post) → Review (brand-review-content) → Post (xurl). For engagement: Research (reply-research) → Review → Reply (xurl).

These skills were adapted from Anthropic's knowledge-work-plugins (marketing/skills/draft-content, marketing/skills/brand-review, sales/skills/draft-outreach), stripped of enterprise/CRM framing and rewritten for indie-hacker voice.

Related Skills

• draft-post — content execution layer (writing the actual posts)
• brand-review-content — quality gate (checking posts before shipping)
• reply-research — engagement execution (research + draft replies)
• xurl — X API posting mechanics (post, reply, search, media)
• github-pr-workflow — GitHub integration for content triggers
• hermes-agent — Hermes config, profiles, cron setup
• foreman-orchestration — Multi-agent orchestration for complex pipelines