Bot Mode

Bot Mode is a feature that lets you set up several named assistants inside one AI assistant program. If you give a single all-purpose assistant everything from research to report writing to repetitive chores, instructions tend to get tangled up and confusing. Instead, you can split the work by role—say, a research bot, a document-organizing bot, a code-review bot—and give each one a name and a face (profile picture), then call on the right one whenever you need it.

The key point is that each bot can have its own memory, its own way of working, and even its own AI model running underneath. That makes it possible to divide labor: assign heavy-duty tasks to a bot powered by a stronger model, and simple repetitive tasks to a bot running something lighter and faster. Bots can also talk to each other, so a research bot can hand off the material it gathered to a writing bot.

This is a feature Nous Research introduced in August 2026 for its agent app, Hermes Desktop. It marks a shift away from cramming every setting into a single profile, toward splitting things up by role. Around the same time, other companies have been moving in a similar direction—breaking a single assistant into multiple distinct roles.

As the article puts it: "Nous Research has rolled out Bot Mode for its agent app, Hermes Desktop. What used to be managed as a bundle of settings under multiple 'agent profiles' is now split into several named bots." It's worth noting that Bot Mode isn't a new chatbot product—it's a feature that changes how bundles of settings are managed within an existing agent app.

Even without access to Bot Mode itself, you can apply the same idea to whatever AI assistant you already use.

1. Sort the tasks you regularly hand off to AI by type (e.g., research, drafting, repetitive organizing).
2. Create a separate chat window or profile for each role, and keep building up relevant instructions and examples only within that one.
3. By making a habit of not mixing different kinds of tasks in the same chat window, you can directly feel the 'setting interference' problem that Bot Mode is designed to solve.