Instead of installing separate applications, a rising number of AI agents are designed to be interacted with via text messages, much like communicating with a real person.
By simply texting your requests, these agents can retain conversational context, integrate with your existing applications and services, and perform various tasks for you. These capabilities include booking appointments, managing your calendar, planning travel, drafting emails, securing reservations, making online purchases, or setting long-term reminders.
Currently, Instinct is a particularly prominent AI agent, especially given its recent $1 billion funding round which valued it at $10 billion. However, numerous other entities are also actively developing solutions in this burgeoning sector.
Featured below are several significant options available, encompassing versatile personal assistants alongside specialized agents tailored for family management, travel planning, and professional use.
Caddy
Caddy functions as an AI assistant, transforming disparate information on your smartphone into actionable items. It operates within iMessage for iPhone users and RCS for Android users, eliminating the need for a dedicated application or inbox.
For example, if an email includes an appointment to be added to your calendar, or a friend texts you a shopping list, Caddy prevents these details from being overlooked. It integrates with your calendars and communications, pinpointing items that require your attention. This allows it to automatically add events, establish reminders, manage follow-ups, and even conduct research on your behalf.
Caddy launched its public beta in April 2026.
Fambot
Fambot serves as an AI-driven “chief of staff” for households, engineered to consolidate and organize the various elements of family life, such as school correspondence, extracurriculars, meal preparation, scheduling, and other daily duties, into a coherent plan.
This service functions through both a dedicated app and text messages. Fambot is accessible on iOS and Android devices, as well as via the web, allowing families to communicate with it directly through SMS. Each evening, Fambot automatically provides a summary of the next day, covering scheduled events, tasks, and specific requirements like school uniforms or packing lists. Parents can respond to these messages to inquire, verify details, or adjust their calendars.
Presently, Fambot integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar, with future plans to support Outlook and Apple Calendar.
The company commenced its beta phase in early September 2026, having secured $3.5 million in pre-seed investment. While the service is presently free during its beta period, Fambot anticipates introducing a subscription fee comparable to that of a Netflix membership in the future.
Folk
Folk functions as an AI assistant accessible via iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Its capabilities include recalling personal context, organizing reminders, conducting research, monitoring flights, managing email, and executing practical tasks like making restaurant bookings.
A unique feature of Folk is its operation on a proprietary private cloud computer. Moreover, it possesses the ability to run code and carry out complex multi-step tasks, moving beyond simple conversational responses.
Folk initiated its beta in May 2026. It is available without charge, but also provides a Pro subscription for $8.33 per month, which enables unlimited background task execution.
Instinct
Instinct initially gained attention following a $350 million funding round, which set its valuation at $2.5 billion. By September 2026, it secured an additional $1 billion, increasing its valuation to $10 billion.
This continuously available agent is capable of performing actions for you, extending beyond merely answering inquiries. Users can interact with Instinct via text or voice, linking it to their existing applications and services like email, calendar, Google Workspace, and others. According to the company, initial users have leveraged Instinct for diverse tasks, including trip planning, grocery shopping, ticket reservations, and subscription cancellations.
During September, Instinct started offering users exclusive email addresses for their assistants. This initiative aims to enable Instinct to establish and manage accounts on behalf of users without cluttering their personal inboxes. The agent can utilize its assigned address to register for services, communicate with businesses, follow up on inquiries, and manage tasks necessitating an email account. (Nonetheless, this degree of independence has also sparked concerns regarding privacy and security.) Furthermore, it has started implementing functionality for making phone calls.
The company is currently operating in a private beta phase.
Iris
Leveraging the Hermes agent, Iris enables users to assign tasks to an AI assistant directly within iMessage. Users can link their applications and delegate a task with a straightforward message. The agent subsequently executes the necessary steps, maintaining pertinent context from prior conversations. It is also engineered to proactively follow up with users, rather than awaiting further prompts.
Martin
Martin functions as a versatile personal assistant, accessible via SMS, phone, WhatsApp, email, Slack, and its dedicated iOS application.
It assists in managing calendars, emails, reminders, tasks, notes, and various communications. Furthermore, it can perform actions for users, such as sending messages or initiating phone calls, concurrently delivering daily summaries of critical items.
This service is somewhat premium, with subscriptions beginning at $21 monthly.
Miso
Miso adapts the personal assistant model with a specific focus on travel.
Functioning via iMessage, it merges AI-powered trip planning with assistance from a specialized travel team. Users can coordinate flights through messaging, with Miso considering their travel preferences, loyalty rewards, and other essential factors. Additionally, Miso offers travelers access to itinerary specifics, flight status updates, and customized suggestions.
Ohai
Ohai is another family-oriented assistant, dedicated to assisting households in handling the continuous flow of information and duties inherent in daily family routines.
Users can submit messages, forward emails, or make voice commands, and the assistant can convert these into schedules, reminders, and plans. It can also synchronize calendars, assign household tasks, and organize meals among various family members.
It provides a complimentary basic option, alongside various subscription plans scaled by family size, with prices beginning at $9.99 per month.
Ollie
Much like other family-centric agents, the premise of Ollie is to consolidate and synchronize disparate family information—currently spread across school communications, calendars, task lists, and group chats. Ollie can monitor calendars, emails, reminders, tasks, and other domestic specifics, subsequently transmitting pertinent updates to users via text.
A key distinction separating Ollie from competing agents is its status as one of the first mainstream, family-centric AI assistants to attain SOC 2 compliance, a recognized security benchmark.
Introduced in June 2026, Ollie provides a free usage tier, alongside paid subscriptions starting at $25 monthly for 150 messages. A higher-tier plan, priced at $100 per month, permits up to 1,000 messages.
Orbits
Orbits similarly provides an AI assistant tailored for household management.
Accessible via both the Orbits app and text messaging, it can integrate calendars, lists, and conversations, in addition to performing tasks on your behalf. These tasks may involve web searches, purchasing items, making restaurant reservations, modifying appointments, and soliciting quotes for home services.
Furthermore, Orbits can issue chore reminders to family members, facilitate communication with service providers, and assist in coordinating duties extending beyond the immediate family unit.
Orbits has secured funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Speedrun fund, N49P, and Garage Capital.
Pally
Users can engage with Pally in a friendly manner, while granting it access to their routinely used applications. The assistant is capable of linking information across various services like WhatsApp, Gmail, calendars, and Google Drive, thereby assisting users in tracking plans, receipts, dates, files, and other important data.
A free plan is offered, providing features such as 15 minutes of calls monthly. Alternatively, paid plans are available, including one at $25 per month for 30 minutes of calls, and another at $100 per month for 60 minutes.
Poke
Poke was introduced in March 2026 as a versatile assistant accessible via text messaging. It is equipped to manage tasks related to calendars, scheduling, health and fitness, smart-home automation, photos, and other routine daily functions.
Poke gained significant recognition in June 2026 when Apple endorsed it as the initial AI agent for the Apple Messages for Business platform. Just one month later, its parent company, The Interaction Company of California, was acquired by the AI coding startup Cognition, in a transaction estimated in the low nine-figure range.
Rene
Rene is an AI personal assistant conceived to serve as a user’s primary contact, rather than just another productivity tool. Operating via text, it can convert natural language exchanges into tasks, reminders, summaries, and other subsequent actions. Rene also preserves conversational context, enabling it to recall information and highlight items that may require future consideration.
Furthermore, it features a web browser, can generate code, perform shopping, and produce presentations and images.
Rene is presently accessible on iMessage, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
Skye
Rather than requiring users to launch a dedicated application, Skye functions as an “agentic homescreen” for the iPhone. It processes data from linked services and presents what it deems pertinent through context-aware cards, suggestions, and daily updates. This assistant can produce audio summaries, compile pre-meeting information, highlight reminders, and pinpoint potentially valuable data.
Signull Labs, the company behind Skye, secured approximately $3.6 million in seed funding in 2025. It began private testing and beta trials in April 2026, with no public release date announced yet.
Stanley
Stanley is an AI content assistant specifically tailored for content creators, distinguishing itself from general personal productivity tools. Accessible via iMessage, Telegram, and the web, it serves as an AI-powered content manager, assisting users in generating ideas, transforming them into posts, and adhering to a regular publishing calendar.
For example, Stanley can integrate with a user’s Instagram account, leveraging this context to propose content ideas based on the user’s recent activities. Users may also submit voice notes, which Stanley then converts into scripts, captions, and other social media components. The platform incorporates a content calendar and post scheduling capabilities, aiming to streamline content creation into a continuous, automated workflow, minimizing the need for users to conceptualize plans from the ground up.
Tomo
The primary distinction of Tomo’s iMessage personal assistant is its ability to integrate into group conversations, unlike typical private assistants confined to single-user interactions.
Similar to other agents, it is designed to aid with goal setting, accountability, scheduling, and routine organization. Its functionalities also include sending reminders, conducting web searches, managing calendars and email, playing videos, and editing photographs.
The entry-level plan is priced at $19.99 per month.
Town
Town is geared towards professional applications, providing users with a “Townie”—an AI assistant programmed to understand their work habits and manage repetitive professional duties. It is compatible with email, calendars, documents, Slack, and various other platforms.
In June 2026, the company successfully secured a $55 million Series A funding round, spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz and Forerunner.
Wajo
Wajo’s inaugural consumer agent, Fo, possesses the capability to contact businesses, dispatch emails, participate in group conversations, execute bookings and purchases, and collaborate with individuals to accomplish routine tasks.
Central to Wajo’s strategy is endowing Fo with its unique identity. The agent is assigned its own email address, phone number, and payment card, enabling it to engage with businesses autonomously, without users needing to share their personal credentials.
Significantly, Wajo states that should Fo encounter a task it cannot autonomously complete, a human assistant can be engaged to finalize the operation.
Fo was publicly launched in September 2025, offering a free tier, while more demanding workloads and personalized agents are accessible via a paid Pro subscription.