# An always-on agent teammate, decoded

_Teardown_

Decoded from Gemini Spark (Google), Claude Cowork (Anthropic), Grok Bot (SpaceXAI), Muse (Meta), Hermes Agent (Nous Research), OpenClaw (OpenClaw Foundation).

## What you see

Sometime in 2026 the chat apps you already had grew a second self. Google's Gemini Spark,
Anthropic's Claude Cowork, SpaceXAI's Grok Bot and Meta's Muse each sell a version of the same
offer: hand over a task, close the laptop, and the assistant keeps going without you. It takes on a
recurring job on a schedule, watches an inbox or a connected app for something worth acting on, and
messages you back, sometimes minutes later and sometimes the next morning, with finished work or a
question it needs answered first. Two open-source projects, Nous Research's Hermes Agent and
OpenClaw, offer the same shape of product as something you run on your own machine. What you
experience across all six is a chat thread that keeps having things to say on days you never
opened the app.

## What is happening underneath

Nothing here starts because you typed a message. A schedule, a new item in an inbox, or a trigger
you set up starts the session instead, in ordinary code, no different from a cron job. What happens
once it is running is the model's to decide: whether anything actually needs doing, and what to do
about it. That is [always-on assistants](/gradient_ascent/techniques/agent-teammates/), level 7 for
exactly that reason. A scheduled reminder where you pick the time and the model writes one answer
is not this; the level turns on the session running to a conclusion, unattended, with the model
choosing every step in between. Google lists "Set recurring tasks or triggers"[1] among
the things you can hand Spark, and describes it as "a 24/7 personal AI agent" that "keeps working
in the background even when you close your laptop or lock your phone"[1]. Grok Bot's bots
"share a computer of their own in the cloud, so jobs do not stall when you step away"[5].

A single session cannot run forever, so carrying a task from one session to the next is what
[long-running tasks](/gradient_ascent/techniques/long-horizon/) is about: a written checkpoint
outside any one process, not a live connection you left open. Nous Research says its own agent
keeps that state across restarts. "Hermes stores conversations, memories, and skills so you can
return to your work in a later session."[8] Its FAQ is equally direct about what running
your own copy costs: "Tasks that need an active agent will not run while it is stopped; hosted
agents are managed separately in Nous Portal."[8] OpenClaw takes that trade further: its
README says "State, memory, and credentials live on your hardware"[9] and that the
project "has no paid tier, hosted service, or token"[9].

Some of these assistants act on a real interface instead of calling a fixed API. Meta documents
that for Muse, which runs on "a dedicated secure computer with its own browser"[6] and
"can open a browser, fill out forms, and negotiate on their behalf"[6]. Meta does not
document what happens inside that loop. [Computer use](/gradient_ascent/techniques/computer-use/)
is the page that explains the mechanism any product needs to drive a screen: a screenshot, one
action, a new screenshot, repeated until the task is done or something needs a person.

None of the four subscription products lets the model spend money or send something irreversible
purely on its own say-so. [Human approval](/gradient_ascent/techniques/human-in-the-loop/) is the
base version of that gate, where code decides when to pause rather than the model, and each of the
four documents some version of it. Grok Bot's bots "finish jobs end to end, and only come back when
something needs your approval"[5]. Muse "checks with the person before sensitive actions
like sending an email or making a purchase"[6].

## Which page explains each part

| What you see | What it is | The page |
|---|---|---|
| It does something without you asking that day | A trigger starts a session in code; the model decides whether anything needs doing | [Always-on assistants](/gradient_ascent/techniques/agent-teammates/) |
| It still knows what happened last week | State written to a checkpoint outside any one session | [Long-running tasks](/gradient_ascent/techniques/long-horizon/) |
| It clicks through a website or app for you | A model that reads a screen and picks one action at a time, in a loop | [Computer use](/gradient_ascent/techniques/computer-use/) |
| It stops and asks before doing something risky | A rule pauses the run and hands the decision to a person | [Human approval](/gradient_ascent/techniques/human-in-the-loop/) |

## What the makers say

Google describes Spark's approval behavior as part of the product rather than a setting you have
to find: "Spark operates under your direction. You choose whether to turn it on and what apps it
connects to, and it's designed to ask you first before performing high-stakes actions like
spending money or sending emails"[1].

Anthropic's release notes date the shift from a desktop tool to an always-on one precisely. The
entry for January 12, 2026 introduces Cowork as a research preview on Claude Desktop, macOS only,
for Max plans, and says it "runs locally on your computer in an isolated VM"[3]. A person
starts every session on their own machine there, so this site places that release at level 5, not
level 7. The entry for July 7, 2026 is what moves it: "Cowork runs your sessions remotely (in beta),
so your sessions and files are saved to your Claude account and go where you go, on any device.
Work continues when you close your laptop, and scheduled tasks run with no device online"[3], rolling out first on the Max plan. On September 16, 2026 Anthropic folded the product back
into Claude itself: "Claude Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude"[4], on Pro and
Max plans.

Meta documents a second system checking the first, rather than the same model checking itself: "A
separate Sentinel agent runs on that same machine, kept apart from Muse at the system level.
Nothing Muse does reaches the internet unless the Sentinel approves it, and it asks the person for
permission when needed."[6]

## Where it fails

The always-on part arrives in pieces, and each maker says which piece is missing. Grok Bot launched
in beta for named SuperGrok and Cursor plans on desktop and iOS, with enterprise access still a
waitlist[5]. Google's June 2026 update scopes the Spark desktop app to "Beta to Google AI
Ultra subscribers aged 18 and over, starting in the US"[2], and puts the part that would
run a task on your own machine while you are away in the future tense: "coming soon, you'll even be
able to run tasks remotely"[2]. Meta does the same with Muse's strongest privacy claim. A
Muse Confidential VM, in which "the whole VM, including a person's data and conversations with
Muse, is encrypted with a key only they hold, so not even Meta can access it"[6], is
something Meta says it will introduce "Later this year"[6]. For the two projects you run
yourself the gap is different in kind: a stopped agent runs nothing[8], so the always-on
property is your own uptime.

## If you build one

Decide what a login can reach, and for how long, before you hand one over. Meta's design puts that
answer in the credential layer rather than trusting the model to behave around a live password:
"Muse has no visibility into people's passwords or payment methods. Any credentials a person shares
go into secure storage, so Muse can use them without seeing them"[6]. A vault the
assistant can use without reading is worth looking for in anything you connect a real account to.

Treat the approval queue as part of the product rather than a formality. It is the one place you
actually supervise unattended work, so it has to show enough for a person to judge, not a bare yes
or no, which is what the failure modes on the
[human approval](/gradient_ascent/techniques/human-in-the-loop/) page describe. Write the split
itself in code up front: run it automatically, hold it for approval, or never run it at all. That
is what the example on the
[always-on assistants](/gradient_ascent/techniques/agent-teammates/) page does, and it is the one
part of the system a prompt is the wrong place for.

One question separates a genuinely always-on product from a scheduled chatbot: does it keep running
with no device of yours online? Claude Cowork is the clearest test case, because by Anthropic's own
account the same product went from a person starting every session on a Mac in January to sessions
that "go where you go, on any device"[3] in July. A demo that shows a session starting
when you open the app has not answered it.


## Sources

1. [The Gemini app becomes more agentic, delivering proactive, 24/7 help](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/next-evolution-gemini-app/) — Google (accessed 2026-09-18)
2. [Gemini Spark updates: macOS launch, connected apps and more](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/gemini-spark-updates-june-2026/) — Google (accessed 2026-09-18)
3. [Release notes](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12138966-release-notes) — Anthropic (Claude Help Center) (accessed 2026-09-18)
4. [Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude](https://claude.com/blog/cowork-is-now-claude) — Anthropic, 2026-09-16 (accessed 2026-09-18)
5. [Introducing Grok Bot](https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot) — SpaceXAI, 2026-08-11 (accessed 2026-09-18)
6. [Introducing Muse: The World's First Personal AI Agent Built for Everyone](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/) — Meta, 2026-09-08 (accessed 2026-09-18)
7. [GitHub - NousResearch/hermes-agent: The agent that grows with you](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent) — Nous Research (GitHub README) (accessed 2026-09-18)
8. [Hermes Agent - Open-Source AI Agent That Grows With You](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/) — Nous Research (accessed 2026-09-18)
9. [GitHub - openclaw/openclaw](https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw) — OpenClaw Foundation (GitHub README) (accessed 2026-09-18)


## Techniques it decodes into

- [Always-on assistants](/gradient_ascent/techniques/agent-teammates/) (sourced): Agents that resume work across sessions, schedules, and events.
- [Long-running tasks](/gradient_ascent/techniques/long-horizon/) (sourced): Tasks that run for hours or days.
- [Computer and browser use](/gradient_ascent/techniques/computer-use/) (sourced): Letting the model operate a screen, a mouse and a keyboard.
- [Human approval](/gradient_ascent/techniques/human-in-the-loop/) (sourced): Pausing for a person to approve or correct.

Last reviewed 2026-09-18. This teardown expires 2027-03-17.