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. Two doors lead there: already running hermes? moch-link is one command. Starting fresh? The full backend installs everything. 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 five minutes if hermes is already running — about half an hour from scratch.

Already running hermes? One command.

moch-link connects your existing hermes install to the Moch app — it doesn't install, configure or modify hermes in any way. On your Linux machine:

curl -fsSL https://moch.softland.tech/install.sh | bash

It links your hermes serve to the official Moch relay (api.moch.softland.tech) and prints a QR pairing code. The tunnel dials the relay outbound, so it works from any network, behind any NAT: no router changes, no VPN, no domain. The relay just passes the call along — it stores nothing but a token hash. Your sessions, providers and skills are already there; this is the same hermes, one more door for your phone.

Then it's the same last two steps as everyone else: put Moch on your phone (step 2 below) and scan the QR (step 3). Your hermes already has its keys, so you can skip step 4.

1Starting fresh — put the whole backend on your computer

No hermes yet? Install Hermes itself — a free, open-source agent that runs on your own machine (Linux, macOS, WSL2, Termux). One line, straight from the hermes project:

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

Then run hermes once to set it up (provider key, tools), and link it to your phone with the same moch-link command from the step above:

curl -fsSL https://moch.softland.tech/install.sh | bash

moch-link never installs, configures or modifies hermes — it finds your install, connects it to the relay and prints a QR code. Leave that terminal open; you'll scan the code in step 3.

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. moch-link already brought up hermes serve — 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? bash install.sh qr reprints it.

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

That QR works from anywhere, not just home: your machine dials the relay out, so Moch reaches it from any network with nothing extra on the phone.

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 — hermes' own setup wizard collects it and everything else it needs:

hermes setup

Already ran it when you installed hermes in step 1? Then you're done — skip ahead.

5Use it away from home

There's nothing extra to do: moch-link is the from-anywhere route. Your machine dials the official relay outbound, so Moch reaches it from any network — home Wi-Fi, mobile data, another continent. No router changes, nothing to install on the phone. On your own Wi-Fi it works through the same door; there is no weaker mode to upgrade from.

The manual way (advanced)

Prefer raw hermes with no relay in the middle? It pairs with Moch too — this is the same-network, no-relay path:

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.

If something doesn't work

• Moch says it can't reach the computer: run bash install.sh status on the machine — it shows the link's state. The tunnel needs the machine on (or asleep-but-connected); it reconnects on its own after sleeps and reboots.
• The QR scan does nothing: use the 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, hermes setup.

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