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

folk vs Poke

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against folk's 19.8 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. folk leads on transparency & trust. Both do proactive personal assistants.

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

folkNozomio, Inc. · Platform F19.8/100#993 of 1010 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#960 of 1010

Which one, for what

folk F

Best for People who want a texting companion for habits, workouts, study and money goals, with a free tier.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 67 against 58

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

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 25
  • Schema & documentation, 42 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 30 against 0
  • Security & auth, 24 against 3

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 runfolkPokeEdge
Reliability16%202551Poke +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21042Poke +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.2030Poke +30
Security & auth14%17.5324Poke +21
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83531folk +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86758folk +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 19.8/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactfolkPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorNozomio, Inc.The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under folk's terms (Nozomio, Inc., last updated 8 September 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 release2026-10-122026-06-25
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

folk

folk is a texting accountability assistant with its own cloud computer, a free tier with no card and a privacy policy that rules out training on user data. No outside agent can call it, no status page or changelog was found, and its llms.txt and pricing file disagree on free limits and Max's price.

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

folk

  1. Don't plan to call folk from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, Telegram or WhatsApp thread and iPhone app.
  2. Quote limits and prices from pricing.md and the terms, and note that llms.txt gives different free-tier limits.

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, folk or Poke?

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against folk's 19.8 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. folk leads on transparency & trust.

Other comparisons with folk or Poke

Disclosure

folk 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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