Last year, I remember sitting in WIRED’s office, complaining to my colleagues nonstop about how much AI agents suck. They were just bad at everything.

As a software reporter, I sat through meeting after meeting where tech bros—mostly men—demonstrated how their new agent would revolutionize my everyday life and automate away the tedium. The catch was that none of these so-called “agents” actually worked.

Fast-forward to today, and always-on AI agents are booming, with major players racing to release their own versions to attract early adopters. The key reason these personal agents are hitting the larger zeitgeist, beyond Silicon Valley nerds, is that they work. Well, at least more reliably than last year. AI agents still make mistakes, but I also see significant improvements in following through on tasks and controlling a browser. These little guys got their glow-up.

It can be hard to know where to start with AI agents and which one best fits your automation needs. So I spent a day experimenting with every major AI agent to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Before going to bed on Wednesday last week, I set up six always-on agents on my iPhone: Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, Instinct, Anthropic’s Claude Duet, Google’s Gemini Spark, and xAI’s Grok Bot.