Proactive agents that anticipate your needs are the best new trend in AI during the second half of 2026.

The year started with more AI moving from chatbots that simply answer your questions to agents that handle your tasks. That's where OpenClaw, Anthropic's Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex, and a slew of other agents stole the headlines and drove AI token bills through the roof.

The next stage is persistent agents that can watch your messages, follow your files, carry out multiple-step workflows across different platforms, and preemptively flag you when you're missing something, making mistakes, or are unaware of gaps that are emerging.

OpenAI's Dots, Anthropic's Claude Duet, Meta's Muse, and SpaceX's GrokBot are the best examples. All four are persistent agents that run with their own cloud computer and web browser, work within the apps you connect, run in the background without your intervention, and require your approval before taking consequential actions.

I've been testing the ones from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta for the past couple months and I'm especially impressed with OpenAI's Dots. It has saved me from a number of mistakes and errors, flagged impending calendar conflicts, reminded me of things I promised to do, proactively helped me prepare for important meetings, flagged upcoming deadlines, and generally anticipated my needs in ways that are helpful without being creepy.

Here are a few examples of things that Dots did for me:

• Noticed that a hotel booking confirmation was off by one day on either end of the trip compared to what I had requested in an email thread, which saved me a headache when I would have tried to check in and discovered I didn't have a room
• I remembered that I had promised two deliverables to teammates when I was going to be back at my desk on a Friday, but I couldn't remember what the two things were; Dots reminded me of exactly the two things I had promised and it was over 24 hours ahead of time so I still had time to work on them and meet the deadline
• Caught a discrepancy between facts written in an article in Google Docs and the press release about the topic from my inbox; it was right and it flagged it fast enough that we caught it before it was published
• Proactively flagged two typos in an important work document that I created before it was sent to the stakeholder who needed to review it
• Regularly reminded me of important emails and messages that needed a response, but had scrolled off of my radar

Of course, in order to get this level of usefulness I had to give OpenAI access to my Google Workspace and Slack. And since I work at a media startup, that's not such a big deal. But if you work in a regulated industry or handle deeply proprietary and confidential information, then that's not going to fly. However, more and more software companies are building their own versions of these kinds of agents into their regulatory-compliant versions of platforms for various industries.

As for Claude Duet and Meta Muse, I found that Duet is particularly good at identifying multi-step tasks it could carry out for me and simply offering a button to press to get started. But it's not nearly as prolific or proactive as Dots. And as for Muse, I didn't trust Meta enough to give it private data other than a connection to my Instagram. But it is a good shopping assistant. When I left one of my favorite shirts in a hotel room recently, Muse was able to go out to eBay and find an inexpensive version of the same shirt, for example.

Our Deeper View

This week I had a great conversation with an Uber driver about the ways he was using ChatGPT to streamline important parts of his work in his blue-collar service industry job until being laid off just a few weeks ago. And he mentioned that he's been continuing to use ChatGPT for job searches and automating other parts of his life such as personal budgeting. I asked him if he's been using Dots, and he said, "No." Then I explained some of the helpful things it can do (like the ones listed above) if he's comfortable hooking up his email to it. And then he said, "Oh yeah, it's doing all that for me," and he explained how it flagged new job listings he'd received in email that were a perfect fit for his skills and how he quickly applied to those. So he was using Dots without realizing he was using Dots, or remembering the brand name. I took this as a great sign that AI's latest benefits are starting to reach more users a lot faster. If you haven't tried Dots or other persistent agents like it yet, I'd recommend giving them a try. Just make sure you're clear and intentional about what your data privacy and compliance requirements are.