Nod by n8n vs Grokbot, Dots and Muse: Which Personal Agent?

How does Nod compare with Grokbot, Dots and Muse?

Nod is a free, open-source personal agent from n8n Labs that runs on your own Mac or Windows computer. It lets you pick your own AI model, shows what each task costs, and lets you set a monthly spending limit. Grokbot is the closest rival in how it works, but it runs on its own cloud computer. Dots, Muse and Claude Duet are harder to access, especially in the UK. Nod is still an early preview.

One disclosure first: the hands-on testing behind this comparison comes from a creator whose video was sponsored by n8n. He says he gave an honest review with flaws included, and he tested only Nod and Grokbot side by side. Everything said here about Dots, Muse and Duet comes from their documentation and other people's tests, not direct use.

What is Nod, and what is it meant to do?

Nod is a desktop app (Mac and Windows) that you can also message through WhatsApp or Telegram. The conversation carries across both, so you have one running chat with memory built in.

The pitch is "give it a task, not steps." Nod has its own Linux workspace and a browser. It can research the web, write files, sign into websites and make payments. It is aimed at jobs that eat an afternoon: many tabs, many logins, and several accounts. The examples n8n gives are chasing three unpaid invoices, cancelling a subscription and getting a refund, booking a hotel, and catching up on Slack and drafting replies.

When you start, Nod also suggests tasks. In the reviewer's test, it looked at his inbox and calendar within about three minutes and proposed a weekly routine to draft replies to his most important emails. Knowing what to hand an agent is a real hurdle, so this is a useful touch.

Which AI models can Nod use?

This is where Nod separates itself from some rivals. Claude Duet, for example, naturally works only with Anthropic models. Nod lets you pick during sign-up:

• Claude, currently through an API key (a private access code from Anthropic)
• ChatGPT, by signing in with your Plus or Pro subscription
• Any model through OpenRouter, a service that gives access to many models
• A model running on your own computer

You pay the model provider directly. Nod shows what each task cost and supports a monthly spending limit. If you worry about an agent running up a bill while you are not watching, this is the feature to check first. n8n's own comparison against Dots, Muse and another rival says Nod is the only one of the four that runs on your computer, lets you choose the model and provider, documents a hard spending limit and is open source. That is n8n's claim, so check it against current docs before relying on it.

How does Nod connect to your apps?

Nod uses Composio in the background, which gives it connections to 225 apps. Each connection is a one-click sign-in through the app's own OAuth process (the standard "allow this app to access my account" screen).

The detail that matters in practice is multiple accounts. You can connect more than one account of the same app. The reviewer does accounting tasks where receipts and invoices land in four different inboxes. An agent that can read only one inbox cannot finish that job. With Nod he can connect all four and have scheduled tasks monitor them.

How safe is it to let Nod pay for things?

Once an agent can log into accounts and use a card, the real question is what stops it doing something you did not ask for. Nod's design answers in a few ways:

• Every payment needs your card security code. Nod never saves that code.
• The approval check is separate from the model. If a malicious email tells the agent to pay someone, the payment still stops and waits for you.
• A vault handles logins and cards. It types them into the target website without the model seeing them. Grokbot works in a similar way.
• There is a record of every sign-in, every card use and every message sent through your apps, plus the monthly spending cap.
• It is open source, so you can read the code and the seven trust principles in the docs, and change the app yourself.

Muse also does well here, with its own audit trail and permission process. Dots is poorly documented on this point, so it is hard to judge.

How good is Nod's memory?

Nod keeps one private notebook about you, split into five sections: who you are, how you like things done, the people you deal with, your routines, and lessons from things it got wrong. Before it replies, it pulls only the notes relevant to your request and searches earlier chats.

The design choice worth noting: when you ask it to remember something, a separate memory model writes the note from your own messages only, and every note must quote something you actually said. An hourly background job archives outdated or duplicate notes instead of deleting them. After a long, fiddly task, Nod also writes itself a short how-to for next time with personal details removed. You can view and edit every memory in settings, and import memory from another agent using provided prompts.

The figures come from n8n, and the reviewer did not have time to test memory himself:

• 93.2% on LongMemEval, a standard long-term memory benchmark (500 questions about months of earlier chats, asked in a fresh session).
• 216 attack attempts using emails designed to plant false facts in memory, none of which got through. The same test on OpenClaw reportedly worked 87.5% of the time.

Treat these as the vendor's results until independent tests appear.

How did Nod do in a real test?

The reviewer gave Nod a vague job: find an Apify scraper (a ready-made tool for collecting web data) to gather leads for SEO and AI search agencies. Nod read his company's website for context, searched Apify, compared scrapers and picked one with 1,200 users and a 4.6 rating. It recommended a starting directory and category, then offered a small pilot and asked for approval before running it, since the scraper costs money.

Grokbot, given the same prompt, produced remarkably similar results: the same scraper and the same sample test. So on raw capability for this task, they looked close. The difference is where each runs. Grokbot uses its own cloud computer. Nod's computer is yours, though you can later move it to your own server.

Where can you actually use each one?

What are Nod's limits?

Nod is labelled an early preview, and n8n says so on its own site. The reviewer's feedback was that security and data ownership are strong, and his improvement list started with separate threads. Today you get one long-running conversation, which can get crowded if you mix unrelated work. The memory and security numbers are self-reported. And because Nod runs on your machine, an always-on setup means putting it on your own server.

What does this mean for you?

If you are in the UK or EEA, Nod and Grokbot are the options you can try now. Dots Pro and Duet are out of reach there for the moment.

If you care where your data lives, Nod's local-first, open-source approach is the main draw. If you want zero setup, a cloud agent may suit you better.

A sensible way to start:

1. Install Nod and connect one low-risk app first.
2. Set a small monthly spending limit before running anything.
3. Give it a task that ends in an approval, such as a pilot run, and watch when it asks permission.
4. Review the memory notes in settings after a week.

Could you build your own tracker for what an agent does?

If you hand agents real work, you will want a record of it beyond the agent's own chat. A small internal app could log requests, approvals and spend by task, or collect the receipts that arrive across several inboxes into one list. Remy builds and deploys full-stack apps from a plain-English description, with a database and sign-in included. You could describe an "agent task log" or an invoice tracker and get a working tool your team can use, instead of another spreadsheet or subscription.