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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

nanobot vs Poke

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on transparency & trust. Both do assistant proactive.

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

nanobotHKUDS · Agent harness B62.4/100#446 of 986 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 of 986

Which one, for what

nanobot B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with file-based memory and a free choice of model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 51
  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 74 against 30
  • Security & auth, 63 against 24
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 31

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

No per-action approval was found in the docs or source. The agent sends messages, runs shell commands and edits files without asking

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

  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 48

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where nanobot loses 6 points for them

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 runnanobotPokeEdge
Reliability16%207051nanobot +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27742nanobot +35
Agent ergonomics13%16.27430nanobot +44
Security & auth14%17.56324nanobot +39
Payments & pricing10%12.56030nanobot +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88231nanobot +51
Transparency & trust7%8.84858Poke +10
Negative events≤15-60
TotalB 62.4/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactnanobotPoke
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorHKUDSThe Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-152026-06-25
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-03-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity49k starsnone

Verdicts

nanobot

nanobot runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, with no telemetry found in its source and memory kept as files the owner can read and restore. No per-action approval step was found, and the shell sandbox and workspace restriction are off by default. Five security advisories were published between March and September 2026, all with fixes.

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

nanobot

  1. Set tools.restrictToWorkspace to true and tools.exec.sandbox to bwrap or seatbelt before giving it real accounts. Both are off by default
  2. Run 0.3.0 or later. Earlier versions carry the published SSRF flaw in web fetch (GHSA-vc5v-6vwm-wf9m)
  3. Keep allowFrom narrow on every channel and never set ["*"] on Email, which has no pairing
  4. Write secrets as ${VAR} references in ~/.nanobot/config.json. Plain values are stored in clear text
  5. Use nanobot -m "..." for a one-shot run, and keep nanobot gateway running for channels, schedules and heartbeat

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, nanobot or Poke?

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on transparency & trust.

Are nanobot and Poke open source?

nanobot is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Poke.

Other comparisons with nanobot or Poke

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