Building agents without harness engineering

Prism Videos rebuilt its media generation agent using Hermes, an open-source agent framework, instead of building custom infrastructure from scratch. By leveraging Hermes as a foundational primitive, the company eliminated weeks of engineering work on features like session memory, skills, and automations, allowing them to focus exclusively on domain-specific capabilities like media creation tools and integrations. The shift demonstrates that AI agent startups create differentiated value through proprietary data integration and customer customization rather than building agent infrastructure itself.