Personal agents compared, pair by pair

Each comparison puts two products we have taken apart side by side on the same axes. We only build them for pairs we opened ourselves, which is why there are six and not sixty.

A comparison with the vendor's marketing on one side is the thing this site exists to replace. So every product here has a teardown of its own, and every row in every comparison comes from those teardowns rather than from a feature page. None of them ranks the two products, and none combines anything into a score.

• Muse vs InstinctCompared on what each one actually runsMuse and Instinct compared on where each one runs, how you reach it, what it can see, and what neither will confirm. From our own teardowns, not marketing.
• Pine vs TownAnd the widest gap on this benchPine runs nothing that matters on your machine. Town's Mac app reaches your messages, contacts, screen and audio. From our own teardowns of both.
• Instinct vs TownAnd two opposite answers to the same problemInstinct ships 571 actions as a command line and makes the agent read the manual. Town catalogues 1105 tools and shows its assistant 177.
• Muse vs PineAnd what a machine of your own is actually forMuse gives every user a Linux VM and spawns a second for browser work. Pine runs nothing of substance on yours. What each arrangement buys. From our teardowns.
• Muse vs TownAnd two things people call a machineMuse gives each user a Linux VM in Meta's cloud. Town ships a native Mac app reaching your messages and screen. Same word, opposite meanings.
• Pine vs InstinctTwo products that look identical from one step backBoth run server-side, so they look alike. Pine sends browser work to your machine and phones companies. Instinct leases a browser, lives in your messages.

Products we have recorded but not taken apart, which is most of the category, are on the landscape list. They don't get comparisons until they get teardowns.