Happy Monday!
Welcome to your weekly breakdown of all things AI Assistant and the agentic economy.
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All the best,
David
What’s Trending?
Anthropic launched Claude Duet Anthropic has joined the race by launching a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent. It comes to you with what needs your attention, does the tasks you hand it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts for you. Access and pricing for the preview aren’t public yet. |  |
Walmart opened its store to AI agents Walmart launched Agent Gateway, an MCP connection that lets approved agents search Walmart and Sam’s Club and buy for you without seeing your personal info or purchase history. Next month, each agent gets its own Agent Profile in your account, with purchases shown separately and either per-order approval or a spending cap you set. |  |
1Password launches for Agents 1Password announced 1Password for Agents, letting agents sign into sites for you without ever needing your password. No more re-uploading passwords for each agent. Launch partners include Muse, Grok Bot, Claude, OpenAI, Town, Instinct, Tomo, Perplexity and more. |  |
AI Assistant Competition Updates
Grok Bot had a big week: Pages for reports, memos and dashboards; phone access to Calendar, Reminders, Contacts and more on iOS and Android; and 0.77 prerelease builds that most notably add the ability to make Calls (dial, hold, press keys, live transcript).
Wabi launched 2.0, a group agent that lives in one shared thread with your partner, friends or family and handles calendars, tickets and trips.
Town raised a $108M Series B at a $1B valuation for multiplayer work assistants (“Townies”) that ask each other questions and share only what their person would.
Wajo launched Fo MCP, which lets the assistant control physical devices, from a lamp that gives reminders to a vacuum that deep-cleans.
humans& introduced Boba, a social AI you can text or message at boba.app (details beyond the tagline are still thin).
Muse crossed 10M+ users in about 40 days, with shopping among the top activities.
The Agentic Economy
Yelp: Yelp launched Check for Me, an AI phone agent that calls a restaurant for you, asks about the wait, and texts you back. OpenTable booking inside Yelp Assistant is rolling out too. |  |
Mastercard: Mastercard opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines after pilots with Coinbase, Base, Cloudflare and others. Agents get APIs and a sandbox to make machine payments, including via x402. |  |
Gigi: Clara Gold launched Gigi, an agentic network that helps your agent find warm intros. Your agent searches your network, then asks the agents of people you trust to search theirs, without exposing contacts or reading anyone’s email. |  |
phoneuse: Abdulla Ababakre launched phoneuse, an MCP/API that gives AI agents their own cloud phones, real Androids and real iPhones. You tell the agent what to do, and it taps through apps the way a person would, which matters for services that only really work on a phone. |  |
Agents in the Wild! An Agent…
Flagged a $70 Amazon restocking fee on a car-seat return and got the credit with a call script.
Found a $1k cheaper direct flight on a nicer airline after the booking was already made.
Chased a mistaken $350/mo plan until it was cancelled with months refunded.
Cut ~$850/yr off a phone bill, killed ~$1,178/yr in subscriptions, and got ~$1,245 refunded.
Took over a 2-year Google Fi claim and calculated the refund.
Ordered an Ollyball from one text; the package arrived without opening a website.
Got a free Starlink replacement kit by running the support chat.
Filed a homestead exemption worth ~$4K and switched car insurance for ~$1.5K/yr.
Cancelled 5 subscriptions (~$872/yr) and paused lawn care.
Finds Hawaii dates, builds the itinerary, and books flights after months of stalled planning.
Proactively offered to reorder groceries, asked once, then placed the order.
Prompt of the Week
On Deck
iMessage Agent Founder Pitch by Photon We’re bringing 5 to 10 of the best personal agent founders to Corgi Cafe for one night of pitches. Each founder gets the floor to show what their agent does that nobody else’s can, and walk through how they got their first 500 users. Wednesday, October 28th: Event Link |  |