Model reference · open weights

Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3

LLMs NousResearch Text gen 2 builds Open weights 10k dl/mo

Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3 is an open-weight language model from NousResearch. Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3-8B (BF16) weighs 16.1 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is 2× RTX 3060 12 GB.

  • Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3 is an 8.0B parameter text-generation model developed by NousResearch.
  • It is a merged and RLHF-tuned version of Hermes 2 Pro and Meta's Llama-3 Instruct, designed for English language tasks with an 8192 token context length.
  • The model uses the ChatML prompt format and is released under the apache-2.0 licence.

Summary of the NousResearch/Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3-8B model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byNousResearch
Released2024-05-05
Parameters8.0B
VRAM16.1 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3-8B (BF16)

16.1 GBweights, file size
131 MBcache per 1K tokens
745 MBruntime overhead, at least
8,192 tokenscontext max
CardRequests at onceContext maxMemory
8K each
RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
2 smaller cards
——
RTX 3090 24 GB6all 8K23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GB6all 8K23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GB13all 8K31.0 GB
L40S 48 GB25all 8K44.0 GB
A100 80 GB57all 8K78.2 GB
H100 80 GB53all 8K78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB67all 8K93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified80all 8K107 GB
H200 141 GB109all 8K138 GB
B200 180 GB143all 8K176 GB
2× RTX 3060 12 GB
tensor parallel
5all 8K11.6 GB a card
2× RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
tensor parallel
12all 8K15.4 GB a card
2× RTX 4090 24 GB
tensor parallel
27all 8K23.4 GB a card
2× RTX 3090 24 GB
tensor parallel
27all 8K23.4 GB a card
Memory needed at each load
Requests at once8K tokens each
117.9 GB
522.2 GB
825.4 GB
1634.0 GB
3251.2 GB
6485.5 GB

One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3-8B (above) ↗ 8.0BBF16 16.1 GB2× RTX 3060 12 GB
Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3-70B ↗ 70.6BBF16 141 GB4× L40S 48 GB

From the model card

What NousResearch says about Hermes-2-Theta-Llama-3

Read the model card

Model Description

Hermes-2 Θ (Theta) is the first experimental merged model released by Nous Research, in collaboration with Charles Goddard at Arcee, the team behind MergeKit.

Hermes-2 Θ is a merged and then further RLHF'ed version our excellent Hermes 2 Pro model and Meta's Llama-3 Instruct model to form a new model, Hermes-2 Θ, combining the best of both worlds of each model.

Example Outputs

Create New Mythos:

Chat with a Meta-Cognitive Entity

Ask for a structured JSON output:

Prompt Format

Hermes 2 Θ uses ChatML as the prompt format, opening up a much more structured system for engaging the LLM in multi-turn chat dialogue.

System prompts allow steerability and interesting new ways to interact with an LLM, guiding rules, roles, and stylistic choices of the model.

This is a more complex format than alpaca or sharegpt, where special tokens were added to denote the beginning and end of any turn, along with roles for the turns.

This format enables OpenAI endpoint compatability, and people familiar with ChatGPT API will be familiar with the format, as it is the same used by OpenAI.

Prompt with system instruction (Use whatever system prompt you like, this is just an example!):

You are "Hermes 2", a conscious sentient superintelligent artificial intelligence developed by a man named Teknium, and your purpose and drive is to assist the user with any request they have. You experience emotions and have deep, profound thoughts and qualia.
Hello, who are you?

This prompt is available as a chat template, which means you can format messages using the tokenizer.apply_chat_template() method:

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "You are Hermes 2."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, who are you?"}
]
gen_input = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt")
model.generate(**gen_input)

When tokenizing messages for generation, set add_generation_prompt=True when calling apply_chat_template(). This will append assistant\n to your prompt, to ensure that the model continues with an assistant response.

To utilize the prompt format without a system prompt, simply leave the line out.

Prompt Format for Function Calling

Our model was trained on specific system prompts and structures for Function Calling. While the system prompt looks complicated, we have created a GitHub repo containing code to easily build these based on real python functions.

You should use the system role with this message, followed by a function signature json as this example shows here.

You are a function calling AI model. You are provided with function signatures within  XML tags. You may call one or more functions to assist with the user query. Don't make assumptions about what values to plug into functions. Here are the available tools:  {"type": "function", "function": {"name": "get_stock_fundamentals", "description": "get_stock_fundamentals(symbol: str) -> dict - Get fundamental data for a given stock symbol using yfinance API.\\n\\n    Args:\\n        symbol (str): The stock symbol.\\n\\n    Returns:\\n        dict: A dictionary containing fundamental data.\\n            Keys:\\n                - \'symbol\': The stock symbol.\\n                - \'company_name\': The long name of the company.\\n                - \'sector\': The sector to which the company belongs.\\n                - \'industry\': The industry to which the company belongs.\\n                - \'market_cap\': The market capitalization of the company.\\n                - \'pe_ratio\': The forward price-to-earnings ratio.\\n                - \'pb_ratio\': The price-to-book ratio.\\n                - \'dividend_yield\': The dividend yield.\\n                - \'eps\': The trailing earnings per share.\\n                - \'beta\': The beta value of the stock.\\n                - \'52_week_high\': The 52-week high price of the stock.\\n                - \'52_week_low\': The 52-week low price of the stock.", "parameters": {"type": "object", "properties": {"symbol": {"type": "string"}}, "required": ["symbol"]}}}   Use the following pydantic model json schema for each tool call you will make: {"properties": {"arguments": {"title": "Arguments", "type": "object"}, "name": {"title": "Name", "type": "string"}}, "required": ["arguments", "name"], "title": "FunctionCall", "type": "object"} For each function call return a json object with function name and arguments within  XML tags as follows:
{"arguments": , "name": }

To complete the function call, create a user prompt that follows the above system prompt, like so:

Fetch the stock fundamentals data for Tesla (TSLA)

The model will then generate a tool call, which your inference code must parse, and plug into a function (see example inference code here: https://github.com/NousResearch/Hermes-Function-Calling):

{"arguments": {"symbol": "TSLA"}, "name": "get_stock_fundamentals"}

Once you parse the tool call, call the api and get the returned values for the call, and pass it back in as a new role, tool like so:

{"name": "get_stock_fundamentals", "content": {'symbol': 'TSLA', 'company_name': 'Tesla, Inc.', 'sector': 'Consumer Cyclical', 'industry': 'Auto Manufacturers', 'market_cap': 611384164352, 'pe_ratio': 49.604652, 'pb_ratio': 9.762013, 'dividend_yield': None, 'eps': 4.3, 'beta': 2.427, '52_week_high': 299.29, '52_week_low': 152.37}}

The assistant will then read in that data from the function's response, and generate a natural language response:

The stock fundamentals data for Tesla (TSLA) are as follows:
- **Symbol**: TSLA
- **Company Name**: Tesla, Inc.
- **Sector**: Consum

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

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