Yes, Brave search is one of these services I highly recommend paying for, the search they provide (similar to Exa, Tavily) is what makes an "OK LLM" become super smart.

I have my mine setup with a searxng instance I run in a docker. Works great and costs zero.

Hermes is just an agent that can be setup for whatever you want (coding or more commonly personal assistant ala clawdbot). You can set it up with any of the standard tools and MCPs like brave or tavily for search.

10 years worth of Claude Max today. Also - Anthropic recently removed a model I relied on and isn't giving it back. As a non-US citizen, I would rather pay in advance but be sure, I will keep having access to inference on my own terms.

Also, it will just be faster - and more fun too.