Agents that work alone, drive your iPhone, or watch through your camera
Three free projects show where personal agents are going. agent-autoloop got 4,030 GitHub stars in its first days. It lets your command-line agent pick up tasks in the background and follow them to the end. It does not bother you, and only sends you a card when it is unsure.
Poki lets AI agents operate a real iPhone, with no jailbreak and no extra hardware. It uses MCP, a standard way to plug AI into tools, and runs locally. Observer, shared on r/LocalLLaMA, uses local models to watch through your phone camera. Its maker gets alerts when someone approaches the car, a bird lands on the nest, or a gym machine is free.
These are for curious users who like to tinker. I would use Observer to know when the Tim Hortons line is short.
Running locally is good for privacy. But an agent that works alone, or that controls your phone, holds a lot of power. After today's leaks, give it the smallest access it needs, and test it on things you can afford to lose.
