AI agents that work inside your text messages

TechCrunch has published a roundup of the most notable AI agents that live inside text messages. The list covers several types: general-purpose assistants, plus agents built for families, for travel and for work. You talk to them the way you would to a colleague — by simply sending a message.

The point is less the list itself than where the habit is moving. Messaging is already where people hand out tasks, ask questions and settle things, and an agent there removes a step between the request and the result. The split between broad and narrow agents hints at something else: value goes to tools shaped around a specific job and context, not to ones that merely answer everything.

Look at which requests repeat daily in your work chats: where is the invoice, what is the balance, who owns this order. An agent in Telegram or WhatsApp can be given to every role; in 1Cifer it answers from 1C, CRM and bank data within that employee's permissions. Pick one such stream and measure how much time it eats.