The best AI agent for a solo founder's to-do list
By Marcell Havlik, founder of TODO for AI · Updated
One to ten people, no ops team, and a to-do list longer than the week. You need an agent on your own machine, with your logins, not another chat window. Here is how 30 tools score against what this job actually needs, and where each one fits.
Key takeaways
- Top pick. TODO for AI ranks first of 30 AI agents for founders, at 98% fit, followed by n8n (76%) and OpenClaw (69%).
- What decides it. For founders the ranking weights beyond code and long-running work highest.
- Models. TODO for AI runs any provider, Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok or a local Ollama model, on one plan. Pricing: free plan (Claude Sonnet only), then Starter $20, Pro $100 or Ultra $200 a month with any provider included.
- Benchmark. TODO for AI scored 89.9% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with Opus 5.5 (high) (own harness, 80/89 tasks, 2026-10-08; not an official leaderboard submission).
- Not for you if. If you are technical, work only in the repo, and genuinely never want the agent near marketing or ops, a focused coding agent is the simpler purchase. Buy the narrow tool and keep your stack small.
What founders actually need done
A founder is the only user on this list whose work spans every category at once. The same afternoon holds a production bug, a landing page that has to rank, an investor update and a customer who has not been replied to. A tool that only does code solves a third of that, and a tool that only does workflows solves a different third.
So the ranking below weights breadth and unattended running above everything. A great coding agent that cannot touch your ad account scores lower here than it would on a page written for engineers, and that is the correct answer for this reader rather than a slight against the tool.
Fix the bug, build the feature, review the PR. Real code, not scaffolding demos.
SEO pages, ad copy, social posts, outreach email. The work a marketer would do if you had one.
Invoices, CRM hygiene, reports, the weekly numbers, scheduled and unattended.
Hand over a task, close the laptop, read the result. Anything needing you present is a job, not leverage.
Scored for founders
| Rank | Tool | Fit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  TODO for AIOne to ten people, no ops team, and a to-do list longer than the week. You need an agent on your own machine, with your logins, not another chat window. | 98% |
| 2 |  n8nTechnical teams who want automation they can self-host and extend in code. | 76% |
| 3 |  OpenClawTechnical people who want a self-hosted assistant in their chats and are happy to operate it. | 69% |
| 4 |  OpenHandsTeams that want an open, self-hosted autonomous coding agent. | 68% |
| 5 |  Hermes AgentTechnical users who want a self-hosted agent that learns them over time and lives in Telegram, Discord or the terminal. | 67% |
| 6 |  NotionTeams whose work already lives in Notion and who want agents to maintain it. | 63% |
| 7 |  ClickUpTeams already running ClickUp who want agents inside their existing boards. | 59% |
| 8 |  LindyOps and go-to-market teams automating repeatable processes without writing code. | 59% |
| 9 |  Copilot CoworkCompanies already standardised on Microsoft 365 who want an agent inside Outlook, Teams and Office. | 55% |
| 10 |  LinearEngineering teams who want issues, cycles and coding agents on one board. | 55% |
| 11 |  MakeTeams who want Zapier-style automation with more control and a lower per-run cost. | 55% |
| 12 |  AsanaOperations teams who want repeatable intake and routing automated inside Asana. | 54% |
| 13 |  Claude CoworkClaude subscribers who want autonomous document, research and browser work without leaving Anthropic. | 54% |
| 14 |  GumloopMarketing and ops teams automating AI-heavy research, enrichment and content pipelines. | 51% |
| 15 |  GitHub CopilotTeams whose work lives on GitHub and who want agents attached to issues and pull requests. | 50% |
| 16 |  ManusPeople who want polished research, decks, sites or short videos from one prompt, mostly in a vendor cloud. | 48% |
| 17 |  ZapierConnecting SaaS tools with reliable trigger-to-action plumbing. | 48% |
| 18 |  monday.comTeams already running monday boards who want agents acting on those boards. | 46% |
| 19 |  AiderDevelopers who want a lightweight, transparent CLI pair programmer. | 45% |
| 20 |  Claude CodeDevelopers whose work lives in a repo and who are all-in on Anthropic models. | 45% |
| 21 |  AirtableTeams whose work is structured records and who want internal apps and agents on top of them. | 45% |
| 22 |  ChatGPTAnyone who wants one excellent assistant for research, writing and everyday questions. | 45% |
| 23 |  CursorEngineers who want AI inside the editor while they type. | 45% |
| 24 |  OpenAI CodexTeams already on ChatGPT Plus or Pro who want GPT-native coding. | 44% |
| 25 |  ClineVS Code users who want an open agent with their own keys. | 42% |
| 26 |  OpenCodeDevelopers who want a free, hackable terminal agent and already hold API keys. | 42% |
| 27 |  TrelloSmall teams who want a simple shared board and nothing more. | 40% |
| 28 |  MotionPeople whose problem is deciding when to do the work rather than doing it. | 36% |
| 29 |  Base44Small businesses and non-technical builders who want an internal tool or simple app live quickly and cheaply. | 35% |
| 30 |  LovableNon-developers and product people who want a working web app prototype without writing code. | 34% |
How we weighted it
Every tool carries one set of scores across 6 dimensions, used on every page of this site. A page for founders does not rewrite those scores, it weights them. Here is every weight, including the ones turned down:
We build one of these tools, so treat this as an editorial argument rather than a measured verdict. The weights are all above and each tool's underlying scores are on its own comparison page, precisely so you can disagree with them.
The others worth knowing
Fair-code workflow automation you can self-host, priced per whole workflow run.
Open-source personal agent that runs on your own machine and answers in WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and 20+ other chats, bring your own keys.
Open-source autonomous software agent with a self-hosted or cloud workspace.
Open-source self-improving personal agent from Nous Research: skills it writes itself, memory that persists, reachable from 20+ chat apps.