Category: Sales / Market IntelValue: 10Ease: 7
Why Ben should care: Retread rubber sales is relationship-driven, but timing matters. A concise weekly brief can surface freight pressure, tire-industry updates, competitor movement, and account-specific public news before sales calls.
Hermes implementation: Cron job pulls public sources, summarizes account/distributor mentions, ranks follow-up opportunities, and posts a short Telegram digest plus a here.now page.
Workflow sketch: “Every Monday morning, research my top distributor markets and produce: 5 account triggers, 3 retread/freight signals, and suggested call angles.”
Risks / watchouts: Public-source only unless Ben explicitly authorizes CRM/email/calendar access. Avoid fabricating customer facts; label weak signals.
Next step: Create a watchlist template: distributor names, geographies, competitors, target fleets, and preferred sources.
Sources: USTMA newsroom, LangChain Open Deep Research, Hermes docs.
Category: Business / Agent InfrastructureValue: 9Ease: 6
Why Ben should care: Many useful sales clues live behind messy websites: fleet pages, distributor locators, public PDFs, industry event pages, municipal bid pages, and LinkedIn-adjacent public profiles.
Hermes implementation: Use browser automation as a supervised research tool: gather public page evidence, screenshot or cite sources, extract contacts only where appropriate, and produce a call-prep card.
Workflow sketch: “Research this prospect’s public website and recent news; return likely fleet size clues, service locations, decision-maker hypotheses, and 3 outreach angles with citations.”
Risks / watchouts: Browser agents can wander. Keep allowlists, time limits, and citations. Do not log into accounts without permission.
Next step: Prototype on 3 public fleet/distributor websites.
Sources: Browser Use 0.13.3 release, Playwright MCP v0.0.77.
Category: Personal FinanceValue: 9Ease: 7
Why Ben should care: A weekly “what changed?” report is more useful than a giant budget app dashboard. It can flag unusual spending, upcoming bills, savings progress, and subscriptions to review.
Hermes implementation: Start with exported CSVs or manually dropped statements; summarize trends locally; never publish private financial details. Actual Budget is a strong local-first backend candidate.
Workflow sketch: “Read this month’s transaction CSV and produce category changes, bills due soon, subscription candidates, and questions I should review — no advice, no auto-actions.”
Risks / watchouts: Financial workflows should be review-first. No investment, tax, or debt actions should be automated.
Next step: Build a CSV-only prototype with fake/sample data, then decide whether to connect Actual Budget later.
Sources: Actual Budget GitHub, Actual Budget v26.6.0, Maybe v0.6.0 farewell/as-is note.
Category: Life Organization / Personal FinanceValue: 8Ease: 8
Why Ben should care: Receipts, tire/warranty docs, insurance PDFs, school forms, tax documents, and invoices become searchable when converted to clean Markdown with dates, vendors, amounts, and next actions.
Hermes implementation: A local folder watcher or manual “drop zone” converts files with MarkItDown, extracts metadata, and writes organized notes into Obsidian or a private index.
Workflow sketch: “Process everything in /Inbox/Receipts, create one Markdown note per document, tag tax/auto/home/medical, and list any due dates.”
Risks / watchouts: OCR can misread amounts. Keep originals, include confidence notes, and require human review.
Next step: Test on 5 non-sensitive sample PDFs/images.
Sources: Microsoft MarkItDown, MarkItDown v0.1.6 release notes.
Category: Life OrganizationValue: 8Ease: 8
Why Ben should care: A small weekly reset reduces missed follow-ups, forgotten home tasks, and scattered plans. It fits Hermes cron perfectly.
Hermes implementation: A Friday evening checklist asks for or summarizes tasks, upcoming family events, bills, home maintenance, meal/activity ideas near Spartanburg, and top work follow-ups.
Workflow sketch: “Build my weekend command center: top 5 unfinished work items, family logistics, errands, bill reminders, and one local family outing idea.”
Risks / watchouts: Calendar/email integration should wait until explicitly authorized; start with manual pasted input or a local note.
Next step: Create an Obsidian weekly template and have Hermes fill it from manually provided notes.
Sources: Hermes Agent documentation, Hermes Skills Hub.
Category: Agent InfrastructureValue: 7Ease: 5
Why Ben should care: n8n is good for deterministic plumbing; Hermes is better for judgment and language. Pairing them can automate boring routing while keeping human approval for anything sensitive.
Hermes implementation: n8n watches forms/files/webhooks; Hermes summarizes and recommends; Ben approves via Telegram before anything is sent or changed.
Workflow sketch: “When a new lead form arrives, enrich it publicly, draft a response, and send me an approve/edit/reject prompt.”
Risks / watchouts: Setup overhead and credential management. Keep automation read-only until proven.
Next step: Prototype with a fake lead spreadsheet or CSV, not live CRM.
Sources: n8n GitHub, n8n 2.28.4 release.
browser-use skill installer for coding agents — promising for supervised prospect research.