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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Caddy vs CowAgent

CowAgent scores 58.5 (C) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on transparency & trust. Both do proactive personal assistants.

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

CaddyCaddy Technologies Inc. · Platform F16.7/100#996 of 1010 CowAgentzhayujie · Agent harness C58.5/100#592 of 1010

Which one, for what

Caddy F

Best for People who want a free assistant in iMessage or RCS that watches mail, calendars and work tools and asks before acting.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 52 against 45

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where CowAgent loses 5 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

CowAgent C

Best for One technical owner who wants an assistant on WeChat, Feishu, DingTalk, Telegram, Slack or Discord with memory in local files and a choice of Chinese and Western model providers.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 84 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 67 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 59 against 0
  • Security & auth, 43 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

Source and Docker installs default to full-access, and no mode asks the owner before a shell command, a file send or an MCP call

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCaddyCowAgentEdge
Reliability16%201084CowAgent +74
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21067CowAgent +57
Agent ergonomics13%16.2059CowAgent +59
Security & auth14%17.5043CowAgent +43
Payments & pricing10%12.53060CowAgent +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85583CowAgent +28
Transparency & trust7%8.85245Caddy +7
Negative events≤150-5
TotalF 16.7/100C 58.5/100

Facts side by side

FactCaddyCowAgent
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorCaddy Technologies Inc.zhayujie
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Caddy's Terms of Service (Caddy Technologies Inc., last updated 27 April 2026).MIT
Read-only variant documentedyesyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-09-30
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularitynone47k stars

Verdicts

Caddy

Caddy is a free iMessage and RCS assistant in public beta that watches connected mail, calendars and work apps and asks before sending email or changing data. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, changelog or security contact was found, though its iOS app ships every week or two.

CowAgent

MIT software with seven releases in 90 days, memory kept as plain files in the owner's workspace and three per-session permission modes. Source and Docker installs default to full-access, no action asks for approval, and an open report of 31 July 2026 says group members could reach the owner's files through the bot.

Before you call either

Caddy

  1. Don't plan to call Caddy from another agent. It answers the owner's text messages, Siri and group chats it's added to.
  2. Expect Caddy to ask the owner before it sends email or creates an invite.

CowAgent

  1. Set agent_permission_mode to workspace-write or read-only before connecting any channel. Source and Docker installs default to full-access
  2. Keep the bot out of group chats that include other people. Any member who mentions it reaches the same tools as the owner
  3. Set web_password before changing web_host to 0.0.0.0. The password is empty by default
  4. Set external_api_token to enable POST /v1/chat/completions, and send conversation_id to keep one session. The model field does not select a model
  5. Run it in a container for a hard boundary. The docs and the source both say the permission modes are not isolation

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Caddy or CowAgent?

CowAgent scores 58.5 (C) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on transparency & trust.

Are Caddy and CowAgent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Caddy. CowAgent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Caddy or CowAgent

Disclosure

Caddy 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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