Moch

From zero to chatting

By the end of this page you'll have an AI agent running on your own computer and the Moch app on your phone, paired and talking. No accounts anywhere, and everything you install belongs to you.

You need: a computer you can leave on (a laptop is fine to start), a phone, and about half an hour.

1Put the agent on your computer

Moch is the remote control; the thinking happens in Hermes, a free, open-source agent that runs on your own machine. Installing it is one line in a terminal (you'll need Node.js; the long-term-support version is fine): 

npm i -g softland-moch
moch

moch is a friendly wizard: it installs the agent (ten or fifteen minutes; it never asks for an administrator password), then asks how your phone should reach this computer — from anywhere is the one to pick. That route signs you into Tailscale once in a browser (a free account is fine) and, at the end, prints a QR code. Leave that terminal open; you'll scan the code in step 3. On Windows, install WSL2 first and run everything inside it.

Patient, not stuck. The install works through a checklist with a clock next to it. If a stage fails, fix what it points at and run moch again — it picks up where it left off.

2Put Moch on your phone

Android: download the app from the releases page — under Assets, grab the .apk, open it, and let Android install it. It will point out that the app doesn't come from the Play Store; that's expected for an open-source app that skips the stores.

Download Moch for Android

iPhone, or the developer way: there's no iOS build to download yet, so tonight we run Moch through Expo Go. It takes three minutes and needs no coding:

  • On your phone, install Expo Go from the App Store or Play Store (a free helper app for running projects like this).
  • On the computer, download Moch and start it:
git clone https://github.com/SoftLand-Tech/Moch.git
cd Moch/app
npm install
npm start

A QR code appears in the terminal. Scan it with Expo Go and Moch opens on your phone.

3Pair the two

Point Moch's camera at the QR code your terminal printed, and that's it. The wizard already brought up the gateway — the part that lets your phone reach the agent — as a background service, so nothing has to stay open on the screen. The app remembers this computer and reconnects to it on its own from now on. Lost the code? Run moch again (or just moch qr) and it reprints.

No camera handy? Tap More options in Moch and paste the hermes://connect… line the wizard printed — or type the address and token it listed by hand.

Went with from anywhere in step 1? One small thing on the phone: install the Tailscale app and sign in with the same account you used in the browser. That's what lets Moch reach this computer from any network.

4Give it a brain

One last command on the computer. The agent needs an API key from an AI provider (the companies behind the models) before it can think: 

moch auth login
New to this? An API key is a long password a model company gives you. You paste it in once and pay them directly for what you use. The usual providers are listed for you.

5Use it away from home

On your own Wi-Fi this just works. Paired from anywhere in step 1? So does everywhere else: Tailscale (a free, well-regarded tool that quietly connects your devices to each other over the internet) is already linking the two. Started with same-Wi-Fi pairing and want the road later? Run moch again, choose from anywhere, scan the new code, and you have a second entry in Moch's computer list for the road.

The manual way (advanced)

The moch wizard is a friendly coat over the raw Hermes agent, and you can run that agent by hand if you like seeing every moving part. It pairs with Moch just the same: 

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
hermes setup
hermes gateway setup
hermes gateway start

Then pair from inside the agent's clone, with the address of the computer on your home network and the port your gateway mentioned when it started: 

./scripts/hermes-pair.sh --host 192.168.1.20 --port 8080

If it asks for a token, that's the gateway's dashboard session token, the long key hermes gateway setup handed out. And if you already keep a hermes install you care for, moch import-hermes brings its providers, skills, memories and history along instead.

If something doesn't work

  • Moch says it can't reach the computer: run moch status to check the backend's health. Same-Wi-Fi pairing needs both devices on one network; from-anywhere pairing needs Tailscale connected on the phone.
  • The QR scan does nothing: use the wizard's printed link: in Moch tap More options and paste the hermes://connect… line.
  • It chats but won't think: the agent needs its API key first — that's step 4, moch auth login.

The README has the full manual: every screen, every command, and the phone-app side of push notifications, voice and automations.