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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Town vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Town's 48.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do proactive personal assistants.

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

TownTown.com, Inc. · Platform D48.7/100#834 of 1010 ZeroClawZeroClaw Labs · Agent harness BB70.2/100#161 of 1010

Which one, for what

Town D

Best for An owner who wants a mail and calendar assistant whose routines other systems can trigger.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where ZeroClaw loses 3 points for them

Watch for

The privacy policy describes training with an opt-out and the trust page says training is opt-in.

ZeroClaw BB

Best for One person who wants an assistant on their own hardware that answers on Telegram, Discord, Matrix or email, asks before it writes or runs commands, and works with a local model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 74 against 35
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 33
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 49
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

The docs state that command execution is not audited. [security.audit] records certificate events only, and tool receipts are opt-in and not durable

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runTownZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%203574ZeroClaw +39
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23382ZeroClaw +49
Agent ergonomics13%16.24972ZeroClaw +23
Security & auth14%17.57976Town +3
Payments & pricing10%12.53060ZeroClaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86080ZeroClaw +20
Transparency & trust7%8.86364ZeroClaw +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalD 48.7/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactTownZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorTown.com, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Town's Terms of Service (Town.com, Inc., updated 21 July 2026).MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentedyesyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-102026-09-05
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
Popularitynone33k stars

Verdicts

Town

Town is a hosted assistant that works across the owner's mail, calendar and work apps, and other systems can start its routines through per-routine webhooks with rotatable secrets, idempotency keys and documented errors. A caller can't read a run's result. The privacy policy and trust page disagree on whether training is on by default.

ZeroClaw

Supervised autonomy is the default, so tools outside a short read-only list wait for the owner's approval, and secrets are encrypted in the config file. The docs state that command execution is not written to an audit log, and the project publishes no privacy policy or terms.

Before you call either

Town

  1. Start a Town routine with POST to its webhook URL, Authorization Bearer whsec_ secret, and application/json or text/plain. Expect 202 only.
  2. Send X-Town-Idempotency-Key with a stable event id on every retry so Town doesn't start a second run.
  3. Treat 404 as wrong secret, disabled endpoint or missing endpoint alike, and ask the owner to check Routine Settings rather than retrying.
  4. Send account_email only if the owner allowed the override. It must match a connected account in full and can't widen the routine's scope.
  5. Ask the owner to keep routines that act on webhook input in approval-required mode, as Town's own docs advise.

ZeroClaw

  1. Keep [risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised". full runs every tool not listed in always_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too
  2. Add sending and account tools such as send_via, google_workspace and http_request to always_ask so a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt
  3. List senders in [peer_groups.<name>] external_peers. ["*"] accepts anyone on that channel
  4. Set [web_fetch].allowed_domains and [http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress
  5. Run one-shot tasks with zeroclaw agent -a <alias> -m "<task>". A cron or webhook turn has no prompt, so shell calls fall to the command policy

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Town or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Town's 48.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Town and ZeroClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Town. ZeroClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Town or ZeroClaw

Disclosure

Town 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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