Poke is an AI assistant that lives in your text messages. Launched in March 2026 by The Interaction Company of California, it works over iMessage and SMS, Telegram and, in some markets, WhatsApp, and connects to more than 30 services including Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, GitHub and Asana. You ask for things in plain text, it can message you proactively, and you can package repeatable behaviour as Recipes.
Its calling card is tone. Poke replies like a texting friend rather than a formal assistant, and that personality-first approach drew a large following: reporting around the acquisition cited hundreds of thousands of users and more than 100 million messages in three months. On 23 July 2026 Cognition, maker of Devin, acquired the company for a reported low nine figures. The stated plan is to bring Poke's interaction style into Devin, with Poke itself staying live and unchanged through the end of 2026.
That ownership change is the main uncertainty for buyers: the product's long-term roadmap now sits inside a coding-agent company. On substance, Poke is more a convenient interface to your existing apps than a deeply capable autonomous agent, and it asks for broad account access while publishing little security detail. The pricing ladder jumps from $19 to $199 a month, which leaves little in the middle.
Key Benefits
- No friction: It works inside apps you already open every day.
- Proactive: It can nudge you based on connected services instead of waiting to be asked.
- Extensible: Recipes and Poke Kitchen let power users build their own automations.
- Easy to try: The free tier needs no credit card.
Use Cases
- Inbox and calendar triage — Ask for summaries, drafts and scheduling by text.
- Reminders and follow-ups — Get proactive nudges from connected tools.
- Lightweight automations — Save recurring routines as Recipes.
- Quick lookups on the go — Query Notion, GitHub or other connected apps without opening them.
