Nous Research

Use Firecrawl as a tool with Nous Research Hermes models.

Pair Nous Research Hermes models with Firecrawl to give Hermes live web search, scrape, and crawl.

Hermes models support OpenAI-compatible tool calls, so Firecrawl plugs in as a function the model can invoke. You can reach Hermes via the Nous Portal API, via OpenRouter, or through Nous's Forge agent platform.

Setup

npm install @mendable/firecrawl-js openai zod

export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR-API-KEY
export NOUS_API_KEY=YOUR-NOUS-PORTAL-KEY

Hermes + Firecrawl Tool Call

import FirecrawlApp from '@mendable/firecrawl-js';
import OpenAI from 'openai';
import { z } from 'zod';

const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({ apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY });

// Nous Portal is OpenAI-compatible
const nous = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.NOUS_API_KEY,
baseURL: 'https://inference-api.nousresearch.com/v1',
});

const SearchArgs = z.object({
query: z.string().describe('The web search query'),
limit: z.number().int().min(1).max(10).default(5),
});

const ScrapeArgs = z.object({
url: z.string().describe('The URL to scrape'),
});

const tools = [
{
  type: 'function' as const,
  function: {
    name: 'web_search',
    description: 'Search the web with Firecrawl and return top results.',
    parameters: z.toJSONSchema(SearchArgs),
  },
},
{
  type: 'function' as const,
  function: {
    name: 'scrape_website',
    description: 'Scrape the markdown content of a URL.',
    parameters: z.toJSONSchema(ScrapeArgs),
  },
},
];

const response = await nous.chat.completions.create({
model: 'Hermes-4-405B',
tools,
messages: [
  {
    role: 'user',
    content: 'Research Firecrawl\'s /agent endpoint and cite the docs.',
  },
],
});

for (const call of response.choices[0]?.message.tool_calls ?? []) {
if (call.function.name === 'web_search') {
  const { query, limit } = SearchArgs.parse(JSON.parse(call.function.arguments));
  const results = await firecrawl.search(query, { limit });
  console.log(results.web);
}
if (call.function.name === 'scrape_website') {
  const { url } = ScrapeArgs.parse(JSON.parse(call.function.arguments));
  const page = await firecrawl.scrape(url, { formats: ['markdown'] });
  console.log(page.markdown);
}
}

Hermes via OpenRouter

Prefer a single gateway for multiple models? Route Hermes through OpenRouter:

const client = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY,
baseURL: 'https://openrouter.ai/api/v1',
});

await client.chat.completions.create({
model: 'nousresearch/hermes-4-405b',
// ...same tools, same messages
});

See the OpenRouter guide for the full pattern.

Notes

• Hermes is strong at structured tool output, pair with Firecrawl's JSON format to chain scrape → extract cleanly.
• For long-running agent loops, stream tool calls and use Firecrawl's async crawl so the model isn't blocked on large scrapes.
• Verify the exact Nous Portal base URL and model slug at portal.nousresearch.com, model names update as new Hermes generations ship.