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

Caddy vs Poke

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on maintenance & community. 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 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#960 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

  • Maintenance & community, 55 against 31

Watch for

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

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 51 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 42 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 30 against 0
  • Security & auth, 24 against 0
  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 52

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCaddyPokeEdge
Reliability16%201051Poke +41
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21042Poke +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.2030Poke +30
Security & auth14%17.5024Poke +24
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85531Caddy +24
Transparency & trust7%8.85258Poke +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 16.7/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactCaddyPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorCaddy Technologies Inc.The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Caddy's Terms of Service (Caddy Technologies Inc., last updated 27 April 2026).Proprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-03-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes

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.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

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.

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Caddy or Poke?

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on maintenance & community.

Other comparisons with Caddy or Poke

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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