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

OpenDuet vs Orchid

OpenDuet scores 49.5 (D) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

OpenDuetCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.) · Agent harness D49.5/100#961 of 1238 OrchidZero Email, Inc. · Platform F20.2/100#1187 of 1238

Which one, for what

OpenDuet D

Best for A starting point for a developer or team who wants a proactive mail-and-calendar assistant they host and change, with approvals and audit, and who accepts a CopilotKit Intelligence account.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 58 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 52 against 0
  • Security & auth, 59 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 37 against 24
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

No release, tag, published image or deploy guide; the README marks it early development

Orchid F

Best for A founder or operator who wants Gmail and calendar triage by text with approval before anything leaves.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 42

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpenDuetOrchidEdge
Reliability16%204250Orchid +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25810OpenDuet +48
Agent ergonomics13%16.2520OpenDuet +52
Security & auth14%17.5590OpenDuet +59
Payments & pricing10%12.53010OpenDuet +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83724OpenDuet +13
Transparency & trust7%8.86860OpenDuet +8
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 49.5/100F 20.2/100

Facts side by side

FactOpenDuetOrchid
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.)Zero Email, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceMIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service AgreementClosed service under Orchid's Terms of Service (Zero Email, Inc., last updated 16 January 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Terms last updatedcouldn't be read2026-01-16
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-272026-09-14
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be readyes
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be readyes
Popularity1.6k starsnone
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (4)

Verdicts

OpenDuet

Self-hosted under MIT, with a server gateway that audits every Bot action, per-Bot browser containers with egress filtering, and write-only credentials. Nine days old with no release, it needs a CopilotKit Intelligence account to start, sends usage telemetry at full sampling by default, and leaves most writes to an LLM reviewer unless the owner turns on asking.

Orchid

Orchid is a paid executive assistant over iMessage, SMS and Telegram that holds drafts and calendar holds until the owner approves, with a public status page and a named subprocessor list. No outside agent can call it, there's no free tier, and its privacy policy allows training a personal model while its blog says it never trains.

Before you call either

OpenDuet

  1. Follow the README's Quick start (bun install, bash scripts/start.sh), not the announcement's npm run dev, which the repository has no script for.
  2. Run bun openbot/scripts/setup-learning.ts after copilotkit project select; the server reads INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY, not the CPK_ key the CLI writes.
  3. Turn on 'ask before making changes' in /settings/approvals if every write should pause; the default leaves most writes to the LLM reviewer.
  4. To bring your own agent, register it as a remote-ag-ui Bot in agents.yaml; its tool calls still pass through the gateway's policy and audit.
  5. Set COPILOTKIT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before starting if usage events must not reach CopilotKit.

Orchid

  1. Don't plan to call Orchid from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, SMS and Telegram threads.
  2. Check status.orchid.ai before telling the owner Orchid is down. The 7 August incident moved it to a new number.
  3. Tell the owner that drafts and holds wait for their approval unless they widen it.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, OpenDuet or Orchid?

OpenDuet scores 49.5 (D) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability.

Are OpenDuet and Orchid open source?

OpenDuet is open source (MIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service Agreement). No open-source release is listed for Orchid.

Other comparisons with OpenDuet or Orchid

Disclosure

Orchid 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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