Do you use a personal agent?

Give AI your desktop history

Aug 18, 2026

Hey folks,

I want to know who uses agent products as a ‘personal agent’. ie organise stuff for you, things outside of work, handling email, doing stuff on your computer, etc.

- answers revealed in Thursday’s post.

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Headlines

Grok Bot is taking over a lot of the ex-OpenClaw crowd. Just like the last cycle, there’s already a social feed for Grok Bots that you can’t read (easily) as a human. Hermes Desktop, another work-with-agent app, also launched a Bot mode to mimic the UX of Grok mode.

Grok bot in action:

Computer history in Codex/ChatGPT - New feature that turns your activity across apps and websites on your desktop into memories and a timeline for reference when you ask it to do something (remember the limitless app?). It’s opt-in via settings. Explainer of how it works and an example you can try.

More Codex:

How to enable a 1M-token context window for Sol. (I wouldn’t bother - the default is there for a reason)
Ultrafast GPT-5.6-Sol in the API for select customers.

New in Claude Code:

/design skill creates editable UI artboards where you can pick a direction and tweak it visually (just like Claude Design). Once you’re happy, Claude Code can implement it.
Hit your limits? Set up auto-continue for when the timer resets.

Google released Gemini 3.7 Flash, three weeks after 3.6 Flash. Big improvements on benchmarks (better than GPT-5.6 Terra and Sonnet 5). Flash 3.7 and 3.6 are 50% off till the end of the year.

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My feed

Now that Airtable’s been acquired, Google Sheets is dancing on its grave w/ Sheets Canvas - apps inside Google Sheets that sync with your data.
A little Mac tool to schedule boring tasks & headless agents.
GitHub was down (again) yesterday, and Cursor launched Origin - their competitor. Timing’s phenomenal - I half think they had it ready just for when GitHub went down, because it’s happening a lot atm.
Theo Browne broke down his AGENTS.md and SKILLS.md files. Which reminds me, I should do this too (again).
Factory opened up Guild, a highly selective builder program.
A template to build your own software factory.
Why model routing must be in the harness.
A collection of minimal, animated chart components.
Notes on building products people love when software gets cheap.
Own your intelligence: a how-to guide.
Now harnesses need a harness?
Filling in forms should be smarter (and less annoying for us).
Codex as an assistant video editor for the OpenAI team.
AI usage patterns in software teams based on Linear’s data.
Small things you can do right away to make your interfaces better.
The ElevenLabs MCP is now available in Claude.
Stripe has finalised an agreement to acquire OpenRouter for more than $7B.