For most small businesses and agencies, one well set up AI agent is enough. Hundreds of agents sounds impressive, but it usually means more cost, more things to monitor and more things that can go wrong. Tools like Hermes Agent and OpenClaw do a similar job, Paperclip does something different, and a lot of the daily checking people want to hand to AI can be handled better by simpler tools.
That’s the short answer. Here’s the longer one.
Why I started asking this question
I’ve been working with AI agents for a while now, trying one here and another there, and at some point I started wondering if I should be doing more. Should I have one agent for websites, one for emails, one for SEO, one for each client? Could I run hundreds of agents doing hundreds of jobs? Would I need a much bigger budget? And are tools like Paperclip and OpenClaw better, or are they all basically the same?
The reason I was asking is simple. Running an agency involves a lot of checking. Search Console, Google Analytics, SEO errors, emails, appointments, website health, plugin updates, and then the same again for every client. None of it is difficult, but it takes hours, and it’s exactly the kind of work that feels like it should be automated.
So I looked into it properly, and here’s what I found.
Hermes vs OpenClaw vs Paperclip: are they the same thing?
No. Two of them are the same kind of tool, and one is something different.
Hermes Agent and OpenClaw
Hermes Agent and OpenClaw are both personal AI agents. You run one, talk to it through a web chat or a messaging app, and it carries out tasks for you. They’re doing a very similar job and you’d normally pick one, not both.
The thing Hermes is known for is learning as it goes. It saves what it works out as reusable skills, so it doesn’t have to figure out the same thing from scratch every time. That matters more than people think, because one of the biggest frustrations with AI tools is paying for the same work over and over again.
If you already have one of these running and it works for you, switching to the other won’t give you much. You’d mostly be rebuilding the same setup.
Paperclip
Paperclip sits one level above those. It doesn’t replace an agent, it manages a team of them. You give agents roles, goals and budgets, a bit like running a small company where the staff are AI.
That’s useful when you already have several agents working and you’re losing track of who’s doing what and what it’s costing. If you only have one agent, Paperclip is a manager with nobody to manage.
One agent or hundreds?
This was the big question for me, and the answer was simpler than I expected.
The number of agents isn’t really the thing that costs money. Every time an agent runs, it uses tokens. A hundred agents each doing a check every morning is a hundred lots of usage, every single morning. On a normal subscription you’ll hit your limits quickly, and on a pay-as-you-go plan the bill grows fast.
There’s also the human side. One agent is one thing to keep an eye on. A hundred agents is a hundred things to monitor, fix and update. You end up managing the agents instead of the work, which is the same problem you started with, just moved somewhere else.
I think for most businesses, fewer agents doing clearly defined jobs will beat a big army of agents every time.
Not everything needs AI
What I realised is that a lot of the daily checking people want to give to an AI agent is already handled well by tools that are free or cheap, and they do it more reliably than an agent would.
Plugin updates. WordPress has automatic updates built in. If you look after several sites, management dashboards like MainWP or ManageWP let you update plugins across all of them from one place.
Checking if a site is up. Uptime monitors like UptimeRobot check your site around the clock and alert you when it goes down.
SEO errors. Most technical SEO tools, including Ahrefs, can run site audits on a schedule and email you when new issues appear, so you don’t have to log in and look every day.
Search Console and Google Analytics. Both can be set up to send scheduled reports, so the numbers come to you.
AI earns its place where judgement is needed. Deciding what an error actually means, what to fix first, what’s worth writing about, or what a drop in traffic is telling you. Using AI for work that a simple alert can do is where most of the wasted budget comes from.
What about bigger projects?
Something like building a complete new WooCommerce shop isn’t really an agent job. It’s a build you do once and do properly. Products, categories, branding, shipping zones and payments all get set up at the start, and after that the shop mostly runs itself.
One thing worth knowing if you’re setting up shipping deals: WooCommerce’s built-in free shipping works on a minimum order value, for example free shipping on orders over a certain amount. A deal like “buy two products, get free shipping” is based on the number of items in the basket, not the order value, so it needs a shipping plugin such as Flexible Shipping or Table Rate Shipping.
Will you need a bigger budget?
Not necessarily. In my experience the budget problem usually comes from two things: agents doing work that a free tool could do, and lots of agents repeating the same checks. Fix those and the costs come down a lot.
If you find yourself needing a bigger plan just to keep your agents running, I’d look at what they’re actually doing before paying more. Most of the time, some of that work shouldn’t be going through AI at all.
What this means if you run a business
AI agents are useful, but they’re not a replacement for knowing what needs doing and why. The businesses getting real value from them are the ones who are clear about the problem first, pick the right tool for each job, and only use AI where it actually adds something.
That’s a big part of what we do at Astory Media. We look at where a business is losing time or missing enquiries, and we work out which problems need AI, which need a simpler tool, and which just need fixing properly once.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent better than OpenClaw?
They do a very similar job. Hermes is designed to learn and save skills over time, which helps if you want it to stop repeating work. If you already use one and it works for you, there’s no strong reason to switch.
What is Paperclip used for?
Paperclip is for managing a team of AI agents, with roles, goals and budgets for each one. It’s useful once you have several agents running. It isn’t a replacement for an agent like Hermes or OpenClaw.
Can I run hundreds of AI agents?
You can, but for a small business or agency it rarely makes sense. Every agent run uses tokens, so costs climb quickly, and you end up with far more to monitor. A small number of agents with clear jobs usually does the same work for much less.
Do I need AI to update WordPress plugins?
No. WordPress has automatic updates built in, and tools like MainWP or ManageWP can update plugins across many sites from one dashboard. Save AI for the jobs that need judgement.
