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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

nanobot vs Tab

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

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

nanobotHKUDS · Agent harness B62.4/100#446 of 1010 TabTerrasoft, Inc. · Platform F10.7/100#1003 of 1010

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 5
  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 74 against 0
  • Security & auth, 63 against 4
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 58

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

Tab F

Best for A person who wants a texting assistant that browses, calls and buys with tight checkout controls.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

Private beta behind a waitlist.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runnanobotTabEdge
Reliability16%20705nanobot +65
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2770nanobot +77
Agent ergonomics13%16.2740nanobot +74
Security & auth14%17.5634nanobot +59
Payments & pricing10%12.5600nanobot +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88258nanobot +24
Transparency & trust7%8.84845nanobot +3
Negative events≤15-60
TotalB 62.4/100F 10.7/100

Facts side by side

FactnanobotTab
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorHKUDSTerrasoft, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Tab's Terms of Use (Terrasoft, Inc., effective 2 September 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-15none
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
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.

Tab

Tab is a private-beta texting assistant with a detailed security page on credential isolation and checkout binding, and a public updates page. No outside agent can call it, no price is published, and its privacy policy says nothing on training with user content.

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

Tab

  1. Don't plan to call Tab from another agent. It answers only the owner's Messages or WhatsApp thread.
  2. Tell the owner that access needs a waitlist place and no price is published.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, nanobot or Tab?

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are nanobot and Tab open source?

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

Other comparisons with nanobot or Tab

Disclosure

Tab 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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