Poke Alternatives You Can Text

Poke set the template for the proactive text-message assistant: it lives in iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram, remembers your context, and reaches out first instead of waiting for a prompt. If you like the format but want a different price, a different personality, or a narrower focus, these are the agents worth texting.

What you're really choosing between is how much initiative you want. Poke is high-agency — it acts and messages you unprompted. Notis dials that back into a delegate-and-confirm intern model. Olly and Homer AI keep it simple: a sharp general assistant in your thread, no theatrics. iChatWithGPT is the pick if what you actually wanted was ChatGPT in iMessage. Sidekicks and textmyagent.app strip out the app entirely and run over SMS. folk leans social — booking tables, tracking flights, drafting the reply you're avoiding. Arlo pushes the other direction, toward a work colleague with governed memory and skills across iMessage, Slack, and calls. Tomo is the option if you want less assistant and more companion.

Most offer a free trial over text, so the cheapest way to compare is to message two or three and see whose judgment you trust.