Odoo Hermes

What Is Odoo Hermes?

Odoo Hermes is the integration between Odoo ERP and Hermes AI Agent. It gives your AI agent direct access to your Odoo database — CRM contacts, sales orders, inventory levels, invoices, and more — all through natural language prompts.

Instead of clicking through Odoo's module menus to find a customer or generate a report, you just ask your agent. "Show me all leads from last week." "What's the total value of open quotes?" "Create a new invoice for ACME Corp." Your agent handles the API calls and returns the answer.

There are three ways to set up the connection, each with different trade-offs. The full comparison article covers all three in detail, but here's the quick summary:

Why Use Odoo Hermes?

One Interface, All Modules

Odoo has CRM, Sales, Inventory, Accounting, Manufacturing, and 30+ other modules. Each has its own UI, filters, and reports. Odoo Hermes collapses them all into a single text interface. Ask once, get answers from any module.

Automate Repetitive Tasks

Instead of logging into Odoo every morning to check new leads, update stages, and generate reports, your agent does it on a schedule. Set up a cron job that runs "Pull all new leads from last 24 hours, categorize them by industry, and save the result to my dashboard" — and it happens automatically at 08:00 every day.

Combine Odoo with Other Tools

Hermes Agent isn't limited to Odoo. It also browses the web, sends emails, reads files, and runs code. Your agent can research a prospect on LinkedIn, check their CRM record in Odoo, draft a personalized email, and send it — all in one session.

No Code Required

You don't need to write Python scripts, build API integrations, or maintain middleware. Configure once in config.yaml and your agent is ready. The entire setup takes about 10 minutes.

---

Step-by-Step Setup (XML-RPC Direct)

This is the fastest path — one config block and your agent talks to Odoo directly. For the MCP or n8n approaches, see the full comparison guide.

Prerequisites

Have these ready before you start:

• Your Odoo instance URL (e.g. https://your-instance.odoo4projects.com)
• Odoo username and password (create a dedicated agent user — never use admin)
• Hermes Agent installed and running

Step 1 — Generate an API Key

In Odoo, go to Settings → Users → select your agent user → Technical. Scroll to Security and click Generate API Key. Name it hermes-agent and copy the key immediately — Odoo only shows it once.

Step 2 — Configure Hermes

Add this block to your ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

odoo:
  url: "https://your-instance.odoo4projects.com"
  db: "your-database"
  user: "agent@company.com"
  api_key: "your-api-key"
  readonly: true

Set readonly: true for first setup. Remove it once you're confident and need the agent to create or update records.

Step 3 — Give Your Agent the Prompt

Start Hermes and paste this prompt:

Connect to the ODOO 19 database with the credentials $ODOO_URL $ODOO_USER $ODOO_APIKEY

Step 4 — Verify

Ask your agent a simple question to confirm the connection works:

Give me a list of customers with their email addresses.

If everything is configured correctly, the agent returns live data from your Odoo instance:

1. Azure Interior — azure.interior@example.com
2. Deco Addict — deco.addict@example.com
3. Gem Furniture — gem.furniture@example.com
4. Lumber Inc — lumber.inc@example.com
Total: 8 customers in CRM

That's it. Three minutes, one config block, and your agent talks to Odoo.

What to Try Next

• "Show me all leads in the CRM" — pulls from crm.lead
• "List my recent sales orders" — queries sale.order
• "What products are low on stock?" — checks stock.quant
• "What's the total value of open quotes?" — sums draft sale orders

---

Comparison: Which Method Should You Use?

Factor	XML-RPC	MCP	n8n
Setup time	~3 min	~5 min	~10 min
Determinism	Low (LLM-driven)	Medium (tool-bound)	High (step-by-step)
Audit trail	None	None	Full (n8n logs)
Best for	Quick queries, demos	Multi-tool stacks	Invoices, orders, data entry
Components	Hermes + Odoo	+ MCP server	+ n8n

---

Frequently Asked Questions