AgentsAutonomy & tool use
Video demo uses Hermes Agent's Kanban board to plan an AI-search strategy and build a 50-page site
A promotional video walks through using Nous Research's open-source Hermes Agent Kanban board to turn one prompt into an SEO and generative engine optimization plan, then a roughly 50-page site, without publishing the prompt, model, code or resulting site.
From the r/AISEOInsider (via last30days) article of October 19, 2026 and cited sources: In the demo, one Kanban card produced a markdown strategy covering keyword clusters, site architecture, an on-page template and a GEO section. [2] [3] [8]
SOURCES[2] Linked video: How I Built a 50-Page Site With Generative… youtube.com[3] Agentpedia: Hermes Kanban guide agentpedia.codes[8] Hermes docs: Kanban Orchestrator skill hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
AT Pulse research deskPublished · Updated · 4 min read · AI-assisted analysisAI-assisted, not human-edited. Methodology Corrections Who owns this site
- What happened
- In the demo, one Kanban card produced a markdown strategy covering keyword clusters, site architecture, an on-page template and a GEO section. [2] [3] [8]
- Original source
- r/AISEOInsider (via last30days) article, independent perspective
- Brief by
- AT Pulse research desk AI-assisted; publisher and contact on the desk page
- Studies
- arXiv 2311.09735 (Nov 2023) [4] date from arXiv ID
- When
- October 19, 2026 article published
- Covered
- Oct 19 edition
- Evidence
- 11 sources across 9 sites
- 1How I Built a 50-Page Site With Generative Engine…reddit.com
- 2Linked video: How I Built a 50-Page Site With Generative…youtube.com
- 3Agentpedia: Hermes Kanban guideagentpedia.codes
- 4GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv abstractarxiv.org
- 5Hermes Atlas newsletter, issue 01hermesatlas.beehiiv.com
- 6DiarioBitcoin: Hermes Agent 0.13.0diariobitcoin.com
QuietHow it’s measured
YouTube video · 63 views · 1 like
Reach blends public engagement (views, likes, comments, shares, stars) from the platforms where the story or its original source lives: YouTube, Hacker News, GitHub, Substack and similar. A video and the article written from its transcript share one score, taken from the video. Platforms with no data are left out rather than counted as zero, and the age of a story never lowers its score.
In the demo, one Kanban card produced a markdown strategy covering keyword clusters, site architecture, an on-page template and a GEO section. A follow-up comment on that card then led the agent to build about 50 linked pages, which still needed design work. Hermes Kanban is a SQLite-backed task board: a gateway dispatcher hands cards to worker profiles, and workers communicate through card comments. [2] [3] [8]
The video's three-step GEO routine is audit, answer-first rewrite, then add facts and sources. Only part of it is backed by research. The GEO paper found that adding citations, quotations and statistics raised its main visibility measure by about 30–40% in relative terms. It did not test answer-first rewriting. [2] [4] [9]
Google says pages need no special optimization to appear in its AI features, only normal indexing and helpful content. Its spam policy also bans using generative AI to mass-produce pages that add no value for users. Both points cut against treating agent-built bulk sites as a separate AI-search channel. [10] [11]
benchmark results support adding sources, quotations and statistics.
Read the full assessment
Implication: agent boards can draft whole sites quickly, but quality isn't shown, bulk pages risk Google's scaled-content policy, and agents given deploy tokens get write access to production.
Research is done and I'm writing the dossier now.
Executive brief
The most checkable claim in this story doesn't hold up as stated. The video says it used the Hermes Agent Kanban board on version 0.12, but a third-party guide says Kanban first shipped in Hermes Agent 0.13.0. The Reddit post and its video, narrated by a "digital avatar," describe the open-source agent writing an SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO) plan from one prompt and then building about 50 pages. GEO means shaping content so AI answer engines use and cite it. The post includes no repository, live site or traffic data. Both pieces promote a paid community, a free course and "strategy sessions."
What changed and event timeline
GEO formalized
Princeton-affiliated researchers posted the GEO paper and GEO-bench, later presented at KDD 2024. It reports visibility gains of up to 40% in generative engine responses.
Kanban arrives in v0.13.0
Nous Research added a durable multi-agent Kanban board with heartbeats, task recovery and
/goalpersistent objectives.Reddit walkthrough posted
The post claims one prompt produced a strategy and about 50 pages.
More detail
Capabilities and access
- Agent: Hermes Agent by Nous Research, MIT-licensed, self-hosted.
- Version: the video says 0.12 (5:17). The Kanban CLI it demonstrates is documented as a 0.13.0 feature.
- Commands shown:
hermes dashboard,gateway start,kanban init,kanban createandkanban watch.
Read the full section
- Agent: Hermes Agent by Nous Research, MIT-licensed, self-hosted.
- Version: the video says 0.12 (5:17). The Kanban CLI it demonstrates is documented as a 0.13.0 feature.
- Commands shown:
hermes dashboard,gateway start,kanban init,kanban createandkanban watch. - Model: the underlying LLM is never named.
- Other steps in the video:
/goalloops for existing WordPress sites (6:47), deployment to Netlify with a personal access token (8:47), and Claude "supervising" Hermes (9:03).
Technical analysis for researchers and developers
- Orchestration (Agentpedia):
- Kanban is a SQLite-backed state machine stored at
~/.hermes/kanban.db, with states triage → todo → ready → running → done/blocked. - A dispatcher in the gateway claims tasks, spawns workers and recovers failed ones.
Read the full section
- Orchestration (Agentpedia):
- Kanban is a SQLite-backed state machine stored at
~/.hermes/kanban.db, with states triage → todo → ready → running → done/blocked. - A dispatcher in the gateway claims tasks, spawns workers and recovers failed ones.
- Workers are named profiles with tools such as
kanban_comment, which explains why the video can only talk to the agent through card comments (6:19). - Orchestrator rules: a bundled orchestrator skill tells the orchestrator profile not to do the work itself and to route it to specialists.
- Reproducibility: none. There is no prompt text, model, generated plan, code or site URL.
Claims and evidence
- "One prompt produced a full SEO/GEO strategy and about 50 pages" (5:49, 8:36). The narrator says the site "still needed some design work."
- "A site went from zero to about 1,300 SEO clicks/day and 9,600 AI impressions in one day" (7:45).
- Audit, answer-first rewrite, then add facts and sources (2:41). The paper did not test answer-first rewriting specifically.
Read the full section
- "One prompt produced a full SEO/GEO strategy and about 50 pages" (5:49, 8:36). This is a demo the author ran and reported; no output is shown. The narrator says the site "still needed some design work."
- "A site went from zero to about 1,300 SEO clicks/day and 9,600 AI impressions in one day" (7:45). The site is not named, and nothing shows that Hermes built it.
- Audit, answer-first rewrite, then add facts and sources (2:41). This partly matches the GEO paper: adding citations, quotations and statistics gave 30–40% relative gains on its main visibility metric. The paper did not test answer-first rewriting specifically.
- No independent coverage corroborates this demo.
Context and prior work
- GEO-bench: 10,000 queries drawn from nine datasets, tagged across 25 domains. Keyword stuffing did poorly. On live Perplexity.ai, quotation addition gave about 22% and statistics addition about 37% on different metrics. arXiv HTML
- Google's position: appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode needs no extra requirements and "no special optimizations," only normal indexing and helpful, people-first content. Google Search Central
Limitations, safety and contested findings
- Version mismatch: the video says 0.12, while the documentation dates Kanban to 0.13.0.
- Paper scope: the GEO paper says its strategies vary by domain and need to adapt as engines change.
- Google's own framing: Google's guidance plays down GEO as a separate discipline, which cuts against the "second door" framing in the video (1:49).
Read the full section
- Version mismatch: the video says 0.12, while the documentation dates Kanban to 0.13.0.
- Paper scope: the GEO paper says its strategies vary by domain and need to adapt as engines change. It did not measure effects on traditional search rankings.
- Google's own framing: Google's guidance plays down GEO as a separate discipline, which cuts against the "second door" framing in the video (1:49).
- Spam risk: Google's scaled content abuse policy explicitly bans using generative AI to produce many pages "without adding value for users."
- Credential risk: handing the agent Netlify or WordPress tokens gives an autonomous agent write access to production.
- Commercial interest: the video breaks for course and strategy-session pitches (3:08, 3:45).
Business and practitioner implications
- Speed vs. quality: open-source agent boards can turn a content plan into a working site draft quickly.
- Best-evidenced GEO changes: adding verifiable sources, quotations and statistics (GEO paper). These also count as helpful content under Google's guidance.
- Measure before scaling: build a baseline of AI-answer citations first. Avoid publishing in bulk, which risks a scaled-content penalty.
Read the full section
- Speed vs. quality: open-source agent boards can turn a content plan into a working site draft quickly. Quality, originality and fact accuracy still need human review.
- Best-evidenced GEO changes: adding verifiable sources, quotations and statistics (GEO paper). These also count as helpful content under Google's guidance.
- Measure before scaling: build a baseline of AI-answer citations first. Avoid publishing in bulk, which risks a scaled-content penalty.
- Token hygiene: give the agent scoped, revocable deploy tokens.
The source trail.
Sources (11)
How I Built a 50-Page Site With Generative Engine Optimization
Feed excerpt only. A transcript of the video linked from this page is supplied (linked video auto captions; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTVAv7DqP7Y); automatic text may contain errors.
reddit.comLinked video: How I Built a 50-Page Site With Generative Engine Optimization
linked video auto captions
www.youtube.com