Always-on agents: Grok Bot, dots, Duet and Muse

A chat waits for you. The new product class does not: it reads your inbox in the morning, checks connected apps during the day and gets in touch when something needs your decision. Within three months, four major providers introduced something like it.

What they all share

• A computer of its own in the cloud. The agent keeps working when your laptop is shut.
• Connected apps. Inbox, calendar, file store – through connectors or its own browser.
• Initiative. It starts runs by itself: morning brief, follow-ups, reminders.
• Memory across conversations.
• Approvals before consequential steps.

The four at a glance

For readers in Europe that means: Duet and Muse cannot currently be used in the EU, and neither can dots on the Pro plans. For Business Premium, OpenAI names “supported regions”, for Enterprise and Edu eligible workspaces – whether your account is among them only your own interface will show. With Grok Bot you check plan and access in your own account. Anyone in Europe who wants an always-on agent today often ends up with the self-hosted alternatives – the comparison is in the next station. OpenAI dots · Claude Duet · Muse · Grok Bot

What the providers say about approvals

Claude Duet, according to Anthropic, asks before sending messages, before payments, before signing and before deleting. It does not trade securities or move money between accounts even with approval. You cannot watch it or take over its browser, and background work – the morning brief included – counts towards your plan’s limits.

dots, according to OpenAI, research read-only. Steps that change accounts or share information go through a review that decides whether the dot proceeds, asks you or hands the step to you. One note from the documentation matters: stopping a task does not undo actions already carried out.

Grok Bot runs on a persistent cloud computer. According to xAI, all bots on an account share its files and signed-in browser sessions.

Five questions before setting one up

1. Where does it run, and what is kept there? Every sign-in you give the cloud computer sits with the provider.
2. What does it do unasked? Proactive runs read your data and use quota even when you wanted nothing.
3. What does it ask about – and who defines what is consequential? The provider’s list is not yours. To you, a calendar invitation to a customer may be consequential too.
4. Can you watch, pause, undo? Three different things, and the third is rarely possible.
5. How do you see and delete what it remembers?

A sensible way in

Connect a single source first, read-only, and for two weeks have it deliver nothing but the morning brief. Check one statement from it every day. Only when the brief is right do drafts come in – and sending stays with you.

All four products are young. Availability, plans and limits change monthly; what counts is the provider’s documentation on the day you set things up.