I wanted a code knowledge graph for my repos. I'd heard of Graphify — an open-source tool that scans your codebase and builds a graph you can query — but I'd never set one up. I knew it involved installing something on a VPS, cloning repos, dealing with ports and systemd and API keys. The kind of thing that usually means an hour of documentation-scrolling and terminal fiddling.
Instead, I opened Telegram and sent a message to my Hermes Agent. Something like:
And it just... happened. The agent asked for a GitHub PAT token so it could clone private repos. I sent one. It installed Graphify, cloned the repos, built the graphs, created systemd services, opened ports, generated API keys, set up hourly cron jobs, and verified everything was running. I never touched the terminal. I didn't read a single line of documentation. I just sent messages.
What I sent vs. what the agent did
Here's roughly how the conversation went:
Message 1: "Set up Graphify for these repos"
I sent a few GitHub URLs and said I wanted Graphify running. The agent replied: "I'll need a GitHub token with repo access to clone the private ones." I grabbed a fine-grained PAT from GitHub Settings, pasted it once, and the agent stored it in the git credential store on the server. That was the last time I thought about it.
Message 2: "How's it going?"
The agent came back and told me what it had done:
Installed Graphify on the VPS (uv tool install graphifyy[mcp]) — one command.
Cloned all the repos using the PAT I provided.
Ran graphify extract . --code-only --force and graphify cluster-only to build the graphs.
Created systemd service files so each MCP server starts on boot.
Generated API keys and stored them securely.
Set up an hourly cron job that git pulls and graphify updates each repo to stay current.
Verified each MCP endpoint responds with its 10 tools.
Message 3: "Give me the MCP configs"
The agent replied with the exact JSON to paste into Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client:
That's it. That's the setup.
No SSH. No reading docs. No figuring out which flags do what. The agent handled all of it. I provided two things: repo URLs and a GitHub token. Everything else — the install, the config files, the ports, the cron, the verification — happened on the server, orchestrated through Telegram messages.
This is the part that's hard to convey until you experience it. The agent didn't just follow instructions — it figured out the dependencies, handled the edge cases, and told me what it was doing at each step. When something failed (a port was already in use on one repo), it picked a different port and moved on. It didn't ask me how to handle it.
What the cron job looks like
The agent set up an hourly script that pulls the latest commits and updates the graph. I didn't write this — it did:
The MCP server runs with --stateless, so it reads the fresh graph on every request. No restart needed when the cron job updates the file.
What I can do now
From any coding agent that supports MCP — Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, Windsurf — I can ask:
"Query the graph: how does authentication work?"
Returns the auth middleware, login handler, token validation, and their relationships.
"Find god nodes in this codebase."
Identifies the files and functions that everything depends on — the architectural hubs.
"Shortest path between the payment and user modules."
Shows the dependency chain between two parts of the system.
Another thing I've started doing: using Graphify to conduct routine code audits. The graph lets me spot architectural rot before it becomes a problem — modules that have grown too connected, files that have become god objects, dependencies that should have been abstracted away.
I ask the agent to walk the graph and generate a prioritized list of issues, tagged P0 through P5. P0 is "this will break everything if we don't fix it" and P5 is "nice to clean up someday." The agent produces a task board from the graph alone — no manual code review needed. As the codebase grows, this keeps things from quietly unraveling.
The real magic
I didn't set up Graphify. I asked my agent to set up Graphify. I pointed it at the docs and said "go." It read the docs, installed the tools, configured the services, handled the failures, and presented me with a working system.
If you run Hermes Agent on a VPS, try it. Send your agent a message and ask it to set something up. You might be surprised at what "I'll handle it" means when the agent actually means it.
Graphify is at graphify.com. Hermes Agent is at github.com/nousresearch/hermes. Both are open source. Give them a shot.
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