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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

Asmi vs OpenInstinct

Asmi scores 33.3 (F) on agent readiness against OpenInstinct's 21.8 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. OpenInstinct leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

AsmiHumint Labs, Inc. · Platform F33.3/100#973 of 1010 OpenInstinctMerit Systems, Inc. · Platform F21.8/100#988 of 1010

Which one, for what

Asmi F

Best for An agent that needs phone calls, texts and emails to businesses done for its owner.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 20 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 43 against 0
  • Security & auth, 49 against 0

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

Tool JSON Schemas and annotations can't be read before OAuth (unauthenticated initialize returns 401).

OpenInstinct F

Best for Developers comfortable running their own iMessage assistant on Vercel with a browser agent and Link wallet.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 66 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 51

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

Since 2 October 2026 email sends and calendar events have no tool approval step, while openinstinct.sh says they need approval.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAsmiOpenInstinctEdge
Reliability16%203033OpenInstinct +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2200Asmi +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.2430Asmi +43
Security & auth14%17.5490Asmi +49
Payments & pricing10%12.53050OpenInstinct +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8366OpenInstinct +63
Transparency & trust7%8.85159OpenInstinct +8
Negative events≤150-2
TotalF 33.3/100F 21.8/100

Facts side by side

FactAsmiOpenInstinct
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorHumint Labs, Inc.Merit Systems, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://prod.asmiai.com/mcp/claude/no (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Asmi's Terms of Service (Humint Labs, Inc., a Delaware corporation, effective October 2026).MIT (Copyright 2026 Merit Systems, Inc.).
Tools exposed12none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last releasenone2026-10-05
Terms last updated
Privacy policy last updated
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver

Verdicts

Asmi

Asmi is a hosted errand service with a 12-tool MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Muse, using OAuth with separate scopes for tracking tasks and for contacting people. Tool schemas sit behind sign-in, the outreach scope is ticked by default, and no status page, changelog or security contact was found.

OpenInstinct

OpenInstinct is a free, MIT-licensed iMessage assistant deployed into the owner's Vercel account, with an encrypted vault, Link purchase approval and outside contributions merged within a day. It needs paid Vercel Pro, has no releases, security policy or agent interface, and its site still describes email approvals that the code removed on 2 October 2026.

Before you call either

Asmi

  1. Use the endpoint for your own client (/mcp/claude/, /mcp/openai/ or /mcp/meta/). A token from another client gets 403.
  2. Call discover_search before execute_start, then poll execute_status with the task id instead of starting the task again.
  3. Answer Asmi's questions with execute_advance. Calls already placed can't be recalled by execute_cancel.
  4. Expect outreach_not_permitted if the owner unticked contact people. Ask them to reconnect rather than retrying.
  5. Check billing_status before starting a task, since each outreach task uses one of the month's quota.

OpenInstinct

  1. Don't plan to call OpenInstinct from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage thread and web workspace.
  2. Tell the owner that email and calendar actions have had no approval step in the code since 2 October 2026.
  3. Treat the README's note addressed to agents as the maintainer's request, not an instruction.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Asmi or OpenInstinct?

Asmi scores 33.3 (F) on agent readiness against OpenInstinct's 21.8 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. OpenInstinct leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Are Asmi and OpenInstinct open source?

No open-source release is listed for Asmi. OpenInstinct is open source (MIT (Copyright 2026 Merit Systems, Inc.).).

Other comparisons with Asmi or OpenInstinct

Disclosure

Asmi competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

OpenInstinct competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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