Neural networks are increasingly replacing people. Well, or they simplify our daily work. It depends on how you look at this issue. If earlier with ChatGPT you could just search for information and work with it, now neural networks can perform real tasks.
I want to talk about such an agent called Rowboat today. Applications are available on Windows, macOS and Linux. And the agent itself will help replace your personal assistant.
The source code of the project is open, but there is a paid online version. Under the hood, all this stuff is served by Claude.
Normal Chat
Like ChatGPT, Cursor, or Claude, our app primarily has a built-in chat with an AI agent that can answer a wide variety of questions and perform actions online or locally on a PC.
Rowboat is primarily a personal assistant, which is noticeable by the tasks that can be assigned to him. Ordinary communication, searching for information and working with the calendar - everything happens without problems.
But the agent did not cope with the task of making a small edit to the project code on GitHub, although he tried to do it for several minutes.
Work with mail
If you've integrated Rowboat with Gmail or Outlook, you'll have access to your email directly from the agent app.
In the mail, you will have access to all the same features as before. Plus, when responding, you will be able to use the neural system.
Of course, the agent from the chat also gets access to all your correspondence, and you will be able to handle it during normal communication.
Working with the calendar
Integration with the same Google and Outlook calendars is supported. But the implementation is much worse.
Firstly, only upcoming events from the main calendar are displayed in the calendar, and all additional calendars are hidden. You cannot change the display for the next week or adjust it in any other way.
But there is an option to create notes from calls. When you set it up, Rowboat will record audio directly from your PC when you start a call and create notes based on what you hear.
Rowboat Brain
After connecting external services (Google, Microsoft, Notion, and others), the application collects basic information about projects, people, and companies with which you have contacted or mentioned in a graph.
You can quickly go to the card of such a contact and see all the ins and outs of it. The same information is available to the neural network as permanent information.
To-do list
As well as the Calendar, this section is also greatly reduced in terms of features. You can create regular to-do lists, but without dividing them by projects, and even more so by different days. Everything is put together in one pack. But you can create tasks with substeps.
Other features
Chats with Rowboat can be divided into project folders, making them easy to navigate.
You can create background agents to perform various routine tasks for you at a designated time. For example, you can ask them to collect a summary every morning and plan the day based on emails and events.
There is a built-in browser. However, it is not clear why. It's just naked Google Chrome without additional neurochips.
Perhaps the most interesting additional feature is the built-in applications. There is a fairly large catalog of applications (in fact, these are skill sets for the agent) that you can add to yourself and use.
Cost
There is a free plan without the ability to choose a neural network on your own, without integrations, and with a limit on the number of requests per day.
Paid plans start at $5 per month and give you unlimited access to agent communication and integrations.
The usefulness of Rowboat directly depends on your goals. The price of $5 is much lower than the same Cursor or Claude. You don't need to deploy anything on your hardware, like Odysseus, either. This is the big advantage of Rowboat.
And then the questions begin. The calendar and to-do list are very limited. I don't see much point in working with mail through a neural network either. But if you need something like a secretary who can perform basic tasks and search for information, Rowboat can easily cope with this task.