Brett Adcock's Hark prices its background AI assistant by the usage multiple

Gizmodo's reviewer watched the Filet-O-Fish order go through. He then pointed out that he could have opened the DoorDash app and finished it faster himself ^[15]. Chowdhury replied that agents let people decide how to spend their time ^[16]. "Like I'm spending it talking to you and focusing on doing this demo while it's doing it on my behalf," he told Gizmodo ^[17].

Hark calls the product a proactive "operating system for your life" ^[1]. What teams tell themselves users want is a way out of the chat window. "I think it's hilarious that right now AI is essentially where you have a chatbot and you type into it and it gives you a response," Chowdhury said ^[9]. "Our goal as a company is almost to build a graphical user interface to this future technology," he said, describing the aim as trying "to build the mouse, which is like the interaction method with this future piece of technology" ^[10][11].

What users do in the build Gizmodo saw is type into a prompt box, which Hark calls the composer, and read the response ^[12]. The new parts sit around that box. Gizmodo's writer said he had seen versions of the card stack from Gemini, Siri AI, Samsung Galaxy AI and Poppy ^[13]. Handoff is the part that acts for the user ^[5].

The price list is the most specific thing in the launch. Twice the usage costs $20 a month and ten times costs $100 ^[2]. Each price divided by its multiple comes to $10 ^[19]. Gizmodo's account does not define a unit of usage. If a several-minute fast-food order uses up the allowance the way a long research job does, the simple errand is the worst one to hand over ^[14].

This is one company's price list. It shows Hark selling capacity in multiples ^[2], and on its own it cannot show that agent products as a group are moving to usage pricing.

The card examples come from an office worker's queue: an approval a colleague is waiting on, receipts headed to Ramp for reimbursement, a delivery to authorize, a flight check-in ^[6].

A team choosing between the free plan and the two paid ones can sort a week of its own errands on two axes. One is whether the person would finish the task faster by hand. The other is whether their attention is needed elsewhere while the agent works.

- Faster by hand, attention free: do it by hand. The DoorDash order lands here for anyone at a desk with the app open, going by the Gizmodo writer's account ^[15]. - Faster by hand, attention busy: Chowdhury's demo ^[17]. Handing it over makes sense if a wait of several minutes does not matter ^[14]. - Slower by hand, attention free: multi-step searches, such as finding a nearby dentist, where Gizmodo's writer expected the agent to be more efficient ^[18]. - Slower by hand, attention busy: the box where a $10 multiple has the best chance of paying for itself ^[19].

If that last box holds a few tasks a week, the free tier covers the team. If it fills up, both paid plans charge the same per multiple, so the $20 plan is the cheaper way to learn how much usage the team actually consumes ^[19].