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Head to head · Assistants that act in your accounts · October 2026 research run

NanoClaw vs Tomo

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 314 assistants comparisons

NanoClawNanoCo, Inc. · Agent harness B68.3/100#229 of 993 TomoMapo Labs, Inc. · Platform F13.1/100#989 of 993

Which one, for what

NanoClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 78 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 0
  • Security & auth, 74 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 54
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 47

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt

Tomo F

Best for People who want accountability, check-ins and reminders by text, including in group chats.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where NanoClaw loses 5 points for them

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNanoClawTomoEdge
Reliability16%207815NanoClaw +63
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2820NanoClaw +82
Agent ergonomics13%16.2700NanoClaw +70
Security & auth14%17.5740NanoClaw +74
Payments & pricing10%12.56010NanoClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87854NanoClaw +24
Transparency & trust7%8.86547NanoClaw +18
Negative events≤15-50
TotalB 68.3/100F 13.1/100

Facts side by side

FactNanoClawTomo
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNanoCo, Inc.Mapo Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Tomo's Terms of Service (Mapo Labs, Inc., last updated 24 September 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-092026-09-29
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
Popularity31k starsnone

Verdicts

NanoClaw

Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.

Tomo

Tomo is a hosted personal AI over iMessage and an iOS app, centred on goals, check-ins and reminders, with regular iOS releases since April 2026. No outside agent can call it, there's no free plan, and no status page, security contact or subprocessor list was found.

Before you call either

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done

Tomo

  1. Don't plan to call Tomo from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, group chats it's added to and the iOS app.
  2. Tell the owner that adding Tomo to a group chat applies its terms to every participant.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, NanoClaw or Tomo?

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are NanoClaw and Tomo open source?

NanoClaw is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Tomo.

Other comparisons with NanoClaw or Tomo

Disclosure

Tomo 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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