Everyone is racing to give AI a computer. Most give it a sandbox (a clean cloud box), a brain (a harness that decides how it thinks), or dev infrastructure (a VM to run your own agent code). Very few let it touch a real, logged-in machine with your actual accounts — and none let a non-technical person run that from a chat app. Here's the whole field, plainly.
| Can it… | Cloud agents | Desktop agents | Coding agents | Harnesses Claude MA · TrueForge | Agent computers Otto | Agent-compute Railway |
fastco.work |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Run an AI on a real computer | ~ cloud only | yes | ~ your machine | ~ sandbox | yes | ~ a VM for your code | yes — cloud or yours |
| Run on your own PC / phone (BYO) | no | yes | yes | ~ self-host | its box only | no | yes |
| Use a cloud machine if you have none | yes | no | ~ some | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Work real logged-in apps with no API — Office, Shopee, LINE, a bank | ~ Grok Bot: its own fresh logins, not yours | ~ that PC | ~ oh-my-pi | no | connectors only | no | yes — that's the point |
| Any AI model — no vendor lock-in | their model | their model | yes | ~ TrueForge yes | yes | yes | yes — OpenRouter, Claude, your key |
| Command it from WhatsApp & LINE | no | no | no | no | no | no | yes |
| Watch every click, approve before it acts | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ approvals | ~ | no | yes |
| Windows + Linux + a real Android phone, at once | no | no | no | no | one Linux | Linux VMs | yes |
| Learns across runs & self-corrects | ~ | ~ | ~ oh-my-pi memory | ~ compaction | — | — | yes — remembers what worked |
| Human tap-in (CAPTCHA / 2FA) on the same screen | no | no | no | no | no | no | yes |
| Built for a non-technical person (no terminal) | yes | ~ | developers | developers | ~ | developers | yes — it's a chat |
| Keeps working with your laptop closed | yes | no | ~ cloud | yes | yes | yes | yes — cloud or Lifetime |
| Price of entry | ~$20–300/mo | in their sub | ~$20/mo+ | API / varies | buy hardware | usage-based | Free → $159 |
yes = does it well · ~ = partial / with caveats · no / — = not designed for it. Every claim here is about the category as it ships today; where a tool spans two rows we mark the closer one.
The others give the agent a clean box or a connector. We give it the machine your accounts are already signed into — the apps with no API, the ones a cloud VM structurally can't reach.
No new app, no terminal, no SDK. Text it on WhatsApp or LINE like a colleague; it messages progress back. Built for a person, not a developer.
You watch every click and approve anything irreversible; when a CAPTCHA or 2FA needs a human, you tap in on the same screen and it carries on. The wall that stops other agents is a ten-second handoff here.
Free to start — a Linux desktop and unlimited Android, no card. Bring your own machine or use ours.
Start free — no card →