Instead of downloading yet another standalone application or navigating a crowded dashboard, a growing number of digital assistants can simply be texted like an ordinary person. Users can text these AI agents what they need, and the software remembers context, connects seamlessly to the apps and services already in daily use, and completes multi-step tasks on their behalf.
This new wave of conversational software handles everything from scheduling appointments and organizing complex calendars to researching trips, sending emails, making restaurant reservations, shopping online, and triggering reminders days in advance. While Instinct has captured massive industry attention—bolstered by a staggering $10 billion valuation following a $1 billion funding round—a multitude of competitors are rapidly making their own plays for this booming market. These tools range from general-purpose personal assistants to specialized agents designed for families, travel, content creation, and professional workflows.
Ask Proxy
Ask Proxy distinguishes itself with an approach designed to anticipate user needs before they are explicitly requested. Functioning much like a chatbot that can be texted like a friend, it assists with gift ideas, event planning, weekend itineraries, calendar management, and everyday decisions. Users can even send photographs, such as an empty table, to receive suggestions on how to decorate for an upcoming dinner party.
Unlike traditional reactive chatbots, Ask Proxy takes a proactive stance, reaching out when it notices something a user might otherwise forget or when it encounters a new activity, restaurant, or experience of interest. The company also offers a work-focused variant intended to streamline employee productivity while maintaining strict separation between personal data and corporate systems. Pricing starts at $1 per day for personal use, while business tiers begin at $15 per employee per month for large companies and $23 per employee per month for teams under 49 employees. Users can interact with Ask Proxy over SMS.
Caddy
Caddy serves as an AI assistant engineered to bridge the gap between fragmented information scattered across a smartphone and actionable tasks. Operating natively within iMessage for iPhone users and RCS for Android devices, Caddy eliminates the need to constantly monitor a separate application or inbox. When an email contains an appointment requiring calendar entry or a friend fires off a quick shopping list, Caddy connects directly to calendars and messaging threads to identify action items. It automatically adds events, sets reminders, tracks follow-ups, and performs independent research. Caddy has been operating in public beta since April 2026.
Comma
Designed to manage workloads across both professional and personal domains, Comma operates autonomously to carry tasks through to completion. The system independently reviews its own output and determines when a job is finished, surfacing completed work for human review only when an explicit decision or approval is necessary. It also proactively notifies users and recommends subsequent steps. Comma integrates across a user’s browser, computer files, and remote messaging platforms such as Signal, Telegram, and WeChat. It maintains continuous context and memory across devices, delivers daily briefings, flags urgent matters, and summarizes recorded calls. Comma is open-source and free to start.
Fambot
Fambot functions as an AI-powered chief of staff tailored specifically for family units, consolidating the moving parts of household logistics such as school communications, sports schedules, meal planning, and calendar synchronization into a cohesive strategy. Accessible across iOS, Android, the web, and direct SMS, Fambot sends an automated nightly summary detailing the following day’s events, to-do lists, and logistical requirements, such as school uniform schedules or packing lists. Parents can reply directly to these messages to ask questions or modify their calendars. Fambot currently integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, and WhatsApp, with Apple Calendar support slated for future deployment. Having launched its beta in September 2026 with $3.5 million in pre-seed funding, the service is currently free during its testing phase, with plans to adopt a subscription model comparable to a streaming service.
Folk
Folk operates as an AI assistant accessible via iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram, capable of retaining personal context, managing reminders, tracking flights, handling email correspondence, and executing real-world tasks like restaurant bookings. A key technical differentiator is that Folk runs on its own private cloud computer, allowing it to execute code and perform complex, multi-step tasks rather than merely engaging in conversational chat. Folk launched its beta in May 2026 and offers a free tier alongside an $8.33 monthly Pro subscription for users requiring unlimited background task execution.
Instinct
Instinct quickly became a viral phenomenon after securing $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, followed by a monumental $1 billion funding round in September 2026 that valued the startup at $10 billion. Operating as an always-available agent, Instinct takes decisive actions rather than simply answering queries. Users communicate via text or voice, linking the assistant to existing services like email, Google Workspace, and calendars to handle tasks such as trip planning, grocery shopping, ticket booking, and subscription cancellations.
In September, Instinct introduced dedicated email addresses for its assistants, allowing the AI to create and manage accounts independently without cluttering a user’s personal inbox. The agent can use this dedicated address to sign up for services, contact businesses, and handle administrative overhead, though this high degree of autonomy has simultaneously sparked significant privacy and security discussions. The company has also begun rolling out voice-call capabilities and remains in private beta.
Iris
Powered by the Hermes Agent framework, Iris allows users to delegate tasks directly through iMessage. By connecting preferred apps and issuing simple text prompts, users can hand off multi-step assignments that the agent executes while retaining contextual awareness from previous interactions. Iris is also designed to follow up proactively rather than waiting passively for further user input.
Martin
Martin is a general-purpose personal assistant accessible through SMS, phone calls, WhatsApp, email, Slack, and an iOS application. The assistant manages calendars, email, reminders, tasks, notes, and communications, and can act on a user’s behalf by sending messages or placing phone calls while compiling daily briefings. Pricing for Martin starts at $21 per month.
Maverick
Maverick positions itself as an AI companion integrated directly into text messaging infrastructure. The assistant handles everyday administrative tasks, such as correcting typos, canceling subscriptions, scheduling meetings from voice notes, and helping group chats coordinate event dates. A core feature of Maverick is its protocol of seeking explicit user permission before executing actions. Featuring hundreds of integrations including Discord, Gmail, and Slack, Maverick is currently in beta and free to use on iMessage, with a Pro tier priced at approximately $30.25 USD per month that unlocks 500 monthly tasks, 20 connected apps, scheduled tasks, and expanded memory.
Miso
Miso applies the personal assistant paradigm specifically to the travel industry. Operating through iMessage, Miso combines AI-driven trip planning with human support from a specialized travel team. Users can arrange flights via messaging while the assistant factors in personal preferences, loyalty points, and other logistical priorities, providing ongoing trip details, flight updates, and personalized recommendations.
Ohai
Ohai functions as another family-oriented assistant designed to streamline the continuous stream of household information and chores. Users can send text messages, forward emails, or submit voice requests that the assistant automatically converts into schedules, reminders, and meal plans while coordinating calendars across multiple family members. Ohai offers a free basic tier alongside tiered subscriptions scaled by family size, starting at $9.99 per month.
Ollie
Similar to other household-focused agents, Ollie consolidates scattered information from school messages, calendars, task lists, and group chats into a synchronized text-based interface. Its primary market differentiator is achieving SOC 2 compliance, making it one of the earliest mainstream family AI assistants to meet rigorous security standards. Launched in June 2026, Ollie offers a free tier alongside paid plans starting at $25 per month for 150 messages, scaling up to $100 per month for 1,000 messages.
Orbits
Orbits provides a household-focused AI assistant operating through a dedicated app and text messaging. It centralizes calendars, lists, and conversations while executing tasks such as web searches, purchases, restaurant bookings, appointment modifications, and household service quote requests. Orbits is backed by investors including the Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun fund, N49P, and Garage Capital.
Pally
Pally allows users to interact via iMessage, RCS, and Telegram with an assistant that bridges information across WhatsApp, Gmail, calendars, and Google Drive. The service helps users track plans, receipts, dates, and files, and offers a free plan alongside its core messaging integrations.
Poke
Poke launched in March 2026 as a general-purpose text-based assistant capable of managing calendars, planning, health tracking, smart-home controls, and photo management. In June 2026, Poke gained industry prominence when Apple approved it as the first AI agent on the Apple Messages for Business platform. A month later, its parent company, The Interaction Company of California, was acquired by AI coding startup Cognition in a deal valued in the low nine figures.
Rene
Rene is positioned as a primary contact rather than a standard productivity tool. Operating across iMessage, Telegram, and WhatsApp, the text-based assistant converts natural-language conversations into tasks, reminders, summaries, and automated follow-ups while maintaining long-term conversational context. Rene also features a built-in browser, code-writing capabilities, shopping features, and slide and image generation tools.
Skye
Rather than requiring users to open a standalone app, Skye functions as an agentic homescreen for the iPhone developed by Signull Labs. The software analyzes connected services to surface relevant information through contextual cards, suggestions, audio briefings, and meeting preparation materials. Signull Labs raised approximately $3.6 million in seed funding in 2025 and entered private beta in April 2026.
Stanley
Stanley serves content creators rather than general consumers, operating through iMessage, Telegram, and the web as an AI head of content. The assistant analyzes connected Instagram accounts to suggest post ideas, converts voice notes into scripts and captions, and manages a publishing calendar to automate the content creation lifecycle.
Szn
Szn coordinates tasks and follow-ups through a single conversational thread where users can submit text, voice notes, photos, or forwarded emails. The assistant executes tasks including phone calls, email dispatches, and administrative follow-ups. According to the company, Szn has served over 7,500 businesses across 16 countries.
Tab
Tab emerged from stealth in early October 2026 with a $300 million valuation, backed by investors such as SV Angel, Valar Ventures, and American Spirit. The platform allows users to delegate everyday shopping and personal tasks via familiar messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.
Tomo
Tomo differentiates its iMessage assistant by integrating directly into group conversations rather than functioning solely as a private one-on-one tool. In addition to standard scheduling, accountability tracking, web searches, and calendar management, Tomo supports video viewing and photo editing. Basic plans start at $19.99 per month.
Town
Town targets professional environments by providing users with an AI assistant known as a "Townie," which learns individual working styles to handle recurring office tasks across email, calendars, documents, and Slack. In June 2026, Town closed a $55 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Forerunner.
Underdog
Underdog is a privacy-focused AI assistant that launched an invite-only beta in October 2026. Departing from cloud-dependent architectures, Underdog runs entirely on the user’s local hardware—initially supporting Mac and Windows, with Linux, iPhone, and Android versions in development—ensuring personal data never leaves local devices. The company plans to offer the application for free without advertising.
Wajo
Wajo’s consumer agent, Fo, interacts with the world by calling businesses, sending emails, joining group chats, making bookings, and executing purchases. Fo operates with its own dedicated identity, possessing a unique email address, phone number, and payment card to interact with merchants without exposing user credentials. When encountering tasks beyond its automated capabilities, Wajo incorporates human assistants to ensure successful completion. Fo launched publicly in September 2026 with a free tier and a paid Pro offering for heavier workloads.