TREE Industries

10/12/2026

New leadership. The same independent spirit.

Joshua Johnson is stepping into the role of CEO at TREE Industries. Founder Jill Johnson will become COO and retain full ownership of the company.

Jill founded TREE in 2017 and built it from nothing, working alongside Joshua to establish an independent company where ambitious technical ideas could become working technology. Her business leadership and his technical development shaped a lab spanning artificial intelligence, open-source tools, and real-time interactive systems.

Under Jill’s leadership, TREE developed a body of work ranging from voice-powered virtual production and open-source AI assistant integrations to multi-agent simulations and real-time AI avatars. That work reflects the company’s commitment to making advanced technology more accessible, with an emphasis on privacy and open source.

“Jill built the company that made this work possible,” said Joshua Johnson. “I helped build the technology, but her leadership gave us the foundation and independence to pursue it. This transition carries that partnership forward: Jill remains TREE’s owner and leads operations, while I take responsibility for our direction and what we build next.”

Joshua moves into the CEO role from his position as Chief Technology Officer, bringing 20 years of development experience. He will lead TREE’s overall strategy and business direction, connecting its technical work with product development, partnerships, and growth.

As COO, Jill will bring her founder’s perspective and deep knowledge of the business to operational leadership. The transition changes the division of responsibilities but not TREE’s ownership, independence, or the partnership at its core.

What’s next, built here.

08/28/2026

Introducing TopoTaxi: A completely new approach to real-time character motion.

TopoTaxi opens a game-changing direction for real-time animation. Instead of selecting from prebuilt animation clips or blending between fixed movement states, TopoTaxi generates a continuously evolving performance from the character’s current intent, movement, posture, style, and environment. Locomotion such as actions (walk, run, jump, etc.), idles, interactions, and much more can all be expressed through the same emergent motion system.

Everything you see in this video is running through three models natively in UE5. There are no authored animation clips, no blending, and no fixed animation state machine driving the performance. New intent can arrive while motion is already being generated, allowing the character to continue moving, revise its future, and transition into new movement without a visible break. The result is motion that is more adaptive, expressive, and responsive to what is happening in real time.

07/31/2026

Physical strain should never set the ceiling on someone’s ideas. Disability is not always visible, and no single symbol or story can represent every person.

The person brings purpose, authorship, and judgment. The interface should carry more of the burden of turning intent into finished work.

That is the kind of technology we want to put into the world: technology that protects agency and helps more people contribute on their own terms.

07/30/2026

Computer use should not mean blind clicking at machine speed.

THEIA is being built around a simple principle: verification is the operating model. AI can help people move through complex digital work, while keeping the work understandable, reviewable, and directed by the person at the center of it.

07/29/2026

APIs are powerful, but real work often continues beyond the places they can reach.

Legacy software, creative tools, vendor dashboards, local utilities, and workflows spread across several windows may expose only a screen. THEIA gives Hermes Agent a visual computer-use layer for that messy middle. It can see the interface, choose a target, act through the screen, and verify what changed.

That means a workflow does not have to stop just because there is no clean API or browser automation hook. The screen can become the interface, with the person still directing the goal and judging the result.

Explore the open-source release: https://github.com/TREE-Ind/THEIA-UI-Computer-Use

07/28/2026

Today, we’re introducing THEIA, the Human Environment Intelligence Aperture, built by TREE Industries.

THEIA gives Hermes Agent the ability to see and operate the same interfaces people use. It can find a target, act through the screen, verify what changed, and continue through desktop workflows when APIs or traditional automation cannot complete the work.

We built THEIA because human intent should not be limited by the mechanics of an interface. People should be able to direct meaningful computer work without having to perform every click, drag, scroll, and keystroke themselves.

THEIA is open source and ready for people to explore, test, and build:
https://github.com/TREE-Ind/THEIA-UI-Computer-Use

The Human Environment Intelligence Aperture: a visual perception and UI computer-use plugin for Windows desktop agents.

07/24/2026

We built a custom Hermes Agent / AI Native CRM powered by Twenty CRM and released it free and open source on GitHub.

That connection creates a different kind of operating layer:

• Hermes can reason with live CRM context—records, relationships, fields, and the current structure of the workspace
• It can inspect the schema before creating or changing CRM data and configuration.
• It can work through REST, GraphQL, and metadata tools around real business operations.
• Teams can shape records, views, dashboards, workflows, and metadata around how their business actually works.

The power is not in adding another dashboard. It emerges when agent reasoning is connected to the real context of your business while people remain in control of the decisions and direction.

-For small businesses, that means less disconnected context.

-For teams, it means more shared operational clarity.

- For early founders, it means an adaptable CRM layer that can start self-hosted or connect to the Twenty deployment already in use.

Hermes Twenty CRM is MIT licensed and available now:

https://github.com/TREE-Ind/hermes-twenty-crm

07/12/2026

06/05/2026

05/17/2026

TREE Industries built a Runway hackathon project that turns Hermes Agent into a visual character you can call in real time.

Open the Hermes dashboard.
Choose a Runway Character.
Start a live call.
Talk.

Runway provides the visual character.
handles speech to text and text to speech.
carries the realtime call.
Hermes Agent from powers the response.

The loop is immediate: speak into the browser, watch the character listen, let Hermes handle the response, and hear the answer come back through the character.

The plugin lives directly inside the Hermes dashboard. It lists Runway Characters from the connected account, starts the call from the UI, and manages the LiveKit worker in the background. Character changes restart the worker when needed. Voice settings are cleared between calls so one session does not bleed into the next.

The important part is Hermes inside the character call.

The conversation can reach Hermes tools, skills, memory, and workflows while it is happening. The character becomes the visual front end for the full Hermes system.

The hackathon build proved the path:

Pick a Runway Character.
Start a realtime call.
Talk out loud.
Reach Hermes Agent.
Hear and see the answer come back through the character.

A dashboard plugin.
A visual character call.
Hermes Agent behind the face.