This experiment serves as a reminder of the gap between the theoretical potential of local AI and the reality of its execution in a live browser environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Setup:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Note:<\/strong> Hermes Agent and Ollama were fully updated to the latest version.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2699\ufe0f \/new (^_^)v New session started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u25cf log in to a new WordPress site that is running on my Linux PC. the URL is: https:\/\/localpress.local\/ The username is: localhost<\/strong> and the admin password is: localhost<\/strong> Tell me when you are logged in.<\/em> \u250a \ud83d\udcda preparing skill_view\u2026 \u256d\u2500 \u2695 Hermes \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256e \u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026 \u26a1 New message detected, interrupting\u2026 [Interrupted – processing new message] \u25cf stop all processing. this experiment has failed as you have not achieved this simple task based on the 8+ minutes time you’ve spent on this job which takes a human less than 30 seconds to complete.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u26a1 Sending after interrupt: ‘stop all processing. this experiment has failed as\u2026’<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u256d\u2500 \u2695 Hermes \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256e The verdict from this experiment is clear: local AI agents are not ready for routine WordPress administration<\/strong>. What took the model 8+ minutes of frantic clicking and navigation loops could have been done with two clicks in reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But failures like this are the most informative part of building with emerging technology. We now have a concrete data point \u2014 local-first agents handle authentication fine, but struggle with multi-step web automation and contextual awareness. The gap between “agentic AI” in marketing and “agentic AI” on your desk is still substantial. In this post, I share a candid look at the current state of local AI agents. I attempted to use a local LLM setup\u2014running on my Mac via Ollama\u2014to handle a trivial administrative task: renaming a page within a WordPress installation. Despite the promise of “agentic” capabilities, the result was a failure. This experiment serves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ecmd_meta_description":"Can local AI agents handle basic web tasks? I put Hermes Agent and Gemma 4 31b to the test with a WordPress task. See the results as shown in the Hermes terminal.","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/beginnerprojects.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/wordpress-pages-dashboard-hermes-agent-test.webp\")
\n
Mac Studio M4 Max Base Model<\/a> w 36GB Unified Memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Ollama<\/a> running gemma4:31b<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
Hermes Agent<\/a> running on a separate Linux PC via LAN<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nHermes Terminal Output<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2713 Model switched: gemma4:31b
Provider: custom
Context: 262,144 tokens
(session only \u2014 add –global to persist)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Initializing agent\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u250a \ud83d\udcda preparing skill_view\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcda skill localwp-dashboard-admin 0.1s
\u250a \ud83d\udcda skill localwp-setup-and-troubleshooting 0.1s
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 preparing browser_navigate\u2026
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 navigate localpress.local 1.1s
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f preparing browser_type\u2026
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f preparing browser_type\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f type “localhost” 0.3s
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f type “localhost” 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e9 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am now logged into the WordPress site at https:\/\/localpress.local\/ as the admin user ‘localhost’.
\u2570\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256f
\u25cf great. rename the “Sample Page” to “HerMan” and when done, print “next”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e33 0.8s [error]
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 preparing browser_navigate\u2026
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 navigate localpress.local 0.7s
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f preparing browser_type\u2026
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f preparing browser_type\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f type “localhost” 0.3s
\u250a \u2328\ufe0f type “localhost” 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e9 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e33 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 preparing browser_navigate\u2026
\u250a \ud83c\udf10 navigate localpress.local 1.0s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e105 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e104 0.2s
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 preparing browser_snapshot\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udcf8 snapshot compact 0.3s
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 preparing browser_click\u2026
\u250a \ud83d\udc46 click @e103 0.2s<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u26a1 Interrupted during API call.
\u256d\u2500 \u2695 Hermes \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256e
Operation interrupted: waiting for model response (84.2s elapsed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2570\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256f[<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I apologize. You are correct; I failed to execute this simple task efficiently and accurately. I spent far too much time and ultimately concatenation instead of replacement. I am stopping all processing now.
\u2570\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256f
\u2695 gemma4:31b \u2502 32.2K\/64K \u2502 [\u2588\u2588\u2588\u2588\u2588\u2591\u2591\u2591\u2591\u2591] 50% \u2502 19m \u2502 \u23f2 3m 36s<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I will keep experimenting and reporting honestly \u2014 the wins, the misses, and the sobering reality of what local AI can actually do today<\/a>. I invite you to share your own results: what has worked, and where has it fallen short? Let’s build a clearer picture of where local AI stands right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"