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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs Dots

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 986 DotsOpenAI · Platform F28.3/100#973 of 986

Which one, for what

IronClaw B

Best for One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 67 against 3
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 41
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 22
  • Security & auth, 66 against 58
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 38
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 31

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask

Dots F

Best for A ChatGPT Pro or Enterprise user who wants ongoing work tracked across mail, documents, code and Slack with approval before sends.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Beta. The admin setting is labelled Use dots (Beta), access is rolling out gradually, and Teams access is an invite-only alpha

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runIronClawDotsEdge
Reliability16%20673IronClaw +64
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27441IronClaw +33
Agent ergonomics13%16.26922IronClaw +47
Security & auth14%17.56658IronClaw +8
Payments & pricing10%12.56010IronClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87438IronClaw +36
Transparency & trust7%8.87531IronClaw +44
Negative events≤15-20
TotalB 66.7/100F 28.3/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawDots
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNEAR AIOpenAI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0Proprietary hosted service. The governing terms were not read
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-292026-10-09
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno 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
Popularity13k starsnone

Verdicts

IronClaw

Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as gmail.send_message, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

Dots

Actions that affect accounts or share information pass an automatic review, and custom rules can require approval or a hand-off. Dots is a beta on Pro plans from $100 a month, and no status page, terms, privacy policy or way to delete individual saved notes was found in the pages we could read.

Before you call either

IronClaw

  1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
  2. Install with the release installer and run ironclaw onboard. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
  3. Call POST /api/v1/responses with the bearer token from ~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
  4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
  5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

Dots

  1. Say what may be sent. Asking a dot to draft replies does not permit sending them, and an action outside a stated scope needs another decision
  2. Stop three things separately. Pause stops the main task only, delegated tasks stop in Activity and recurring tasks in Scheduled, and completed actions are not undone
  3. Connect each thing separately. A messaging channel grants no access to an inbox, an app or a computer
  4. Sign out of websites and disconnect apps yourself when removing access. Revoking dots access or disconnecting an app does not delete information already obtained
  5. Keep the connected computer online with the ChatGPT app open for local work. Only one personal computer can be connected at a time

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or Dots?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are IronClaw and Dots open source?

IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Dots.

Other comparisons with IronClaw or Dots

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