Get an audit

Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Dots vs Poke

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Dots leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do assistant proactive.

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

DotsOpenAI · Platform F28.3/100#973 of 986 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 of 986

Which one, for what

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.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 58 against 24
  • Maintenance & community, 38 against 31

Watch for

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

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 3
  • Agent ergonomics, 30 against 22
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 10
  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 31

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 runDotsPokeEdge
Reliability16%20351Poke +48
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24142Poke +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.22230Poke +8
Security & auth14%17.55824Dots +34
Payments & pricing10%12.51030Poke +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83831Dots +7
Transparency & trust7%8.83158Poke +27
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 28.3/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactDotsPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorOpenAIThe Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service. The governing terms were not readProprietary 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 release2026-10-092026-06-25
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

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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, Dots or Poke?

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Dots leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.

Other comparisons with Dots or Poke

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report