GAIA — Personal AI Assistant
A proactive personal AI assistant that connects your tools, runs repetitive work in the background, and reaches you on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, or Discord when something needs you.
- Source repo
- theexperiencecompany/gaia
- Stars
- ★ 320
- Last updated
- today
- License
- NOASSERTION
- Primary language
- Python
- FA score
- 73/100 · Some gaps
At a glance
- How it runs
- Works with
- Universal · cross-platform
- Cost
- Free tier plus a paid hosted plan
- Setup effort
- Medium · a few setup steps
- You'll need
- Typical use
- Individual knowledge workers: have GAIA summarize 47 unread emails and draft replies for the 3 that need one
- Not a fit if
- Teams needing commercial licensing or closed-source commercial deployment
- Users who need fully offline operation without third-party model or integration services
- Self-hosters unwilling to run PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ and more
- Source review
- 73/100 · Some gaps
What does this agent do, and when should you use it?
GAIA is an open-source personal AI assistant (GitHub: theexperiencecompany/gaia) positioned as 'an assistant, not a chatbot.' It connects tools like Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Linear, and Notion, runs multi-step workflows in the background, and proactively contacts the user based on schedules (cron-style) or events (new emails, calendar changes, webhooks). The project is an Nx-managed full-stack monorepo: a Next.js web app, Electron desktop app, React Native mobile app, a FastAPI + LangGraph backend, a voice processing worker, and Discord/Slack/Telegram bots. Users interact via web, desktop, mobile, or messaging platforms, and GAIA maintains cross-tool long-term memory of people, projects, and preferences. It is available as a zero-setup cloud service and is fully self-hostable via an official CLI running everything in Docker; the code is licensed under PolyForm Noncommercial, permitting noncommercial use only.
GAIA connects to Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Linear, Notion, and more through an integration marketplace (/integrations page) using OAuth or API keys, and can attach any MCP server. Concrete capabilities include: (1) ranking and summarizing unread email threads and drafting replies in the user's voice; (2) watching calendar changes and replanning the afternoon against pending todos and goals when a meeting is cancelled; (3) turning meeting transcripts into action items and creating assigned Linear issues; (4) persistently monitoring the inbox (e.g., for investor emails) and pinging via Telegram within 60 seconds; (5) running scheduled workflows such as a Monday 9am meeting-prep briefing per calendar event. Results land as drafts, todos, reminders, or suggested calendar events in the notifications bell and /notifications page, where the user can approve, edit, or dismiss them. Long-term memory is viewable, deletable, and exportable as a list or interactive graph from the Memory settings page.
- Individual knowledge workers: have GAIA summarize 47 unread emails and draft replies for the 3 that need one
- Engineering leads: auto-post a Friday digest of GitHub, Linear, and Slack activity to #eng-updates
- Frequent meeting attendees: generate a prep doc covering everything shipped this sprint before a 1:1
- Sales/investor relations: monitor email from a specific sender and get a Telegram ping within 60 seconds
- Self-hosters: run on your own server via Docker with full data control and no usage caps
- Inbox-zero practitioners: auto-draft follow-ups to emails sent over 3 days ago without a reply
How do you install or deploy this agent?
Cloud: visit https://heygaia.io directly — no installation required. Self-host: requires Docker (Engine 20.10+, Compose v2+) and Node.js 20+. Install the CLI and initialize:
npm install -g @heygaia/cli
gaia init # choose "Self-Host (Docker)"The wizard checks prerequisites, clones the repo, guides you through environment variables, then builds and starts every service in Docker; open http://localhost:3000 when done. Already cloned? Run gaia setup inside the checkout. Management commands: gaia status (health check), gaia logs, gaia stop / gaia start.
How do you use this agent?
Use the web UI at http://localhost:3000 (or heygaia.io), connect Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Linear, or Notion via Connect on the /integrations page (OAuth consent) or paste API keys. You can also chat directly on WhatsApp (/gaia commands), Telegram (@heygaia_bot), Slack, or Discord via /gaia or @mention. Build scheduled (cron-style) or event-driven workflows on the Workflows page; outputs appear in the header notification bell and /notifications page for approval. Long-term memory is manageable and exportable (PNG/SVG) on the Memory settings page. Self-hosted instances use your own model provider API keys configured via environment variables.
What are this agent's strengths and limitations?
- Genuinely proactive: event-driven triggers (new email, calendar changes, webhooks) plus scheduled workflows mean no per-task prompting
- Multi-channel reach: message GAIA on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, or Discord with full context carried across
- Fully self-hostable: data control, no usage caps, and free model swapping, deployed with a single CLI command
- Cross-tool long-term memory: visualized, deletable, exportable; integration content is fetched on demand rather than persisted
- Licensed under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — noncommercial use only; commercial deployment requires separate evaluation
- Self-hosting requires running the full stack (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, ChromaDB, RabbitMQ, etc.) and supplying your own model API keys; model usage costs scale with usage
- Cloud tier does not allow bring-your-own API keys; model selection is gated by subscription plan
- Desktop and mobile apps are marked beta; iMessage integration is not yet available
How does this agent compare with similar options?
Key facts side by side with the most closely related agents.
| Agent | Source review | Form / cost | Stars | Updated | Language | Full support on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GAIA — Personal AI Assistant This agent | 73 · Some gaps | Hosted serviceFreemium | ★ 320 | today | Python | — |
| Talorys | 63 · Some gaps | — | ★ 1.4k | today | TypeScript | — |
| Tale — Shared Workspace for Teams and AI Agents | 50 · Major gaps | — | ★ 36 | 1d ago | TypeScript | Codex · Claude Code · OpenAI API · Claude API |
| BagIdea Office | 71 · Some gaps | Desktop appFree + model costs | ★ 250 | 2d ago | JavaScript | Claude Code · OpenAI API |
How does FollowAgents rate this agent?
Why each dimension lost points
Evidence shows mature supply-chain practice: extensive pinned security overrides in package., a 3-day PyPI cooldown and dependency constraints in pyproject.toml, plus gitleaks/semgrep/pip-audit/trivy in CI (deduction: trivy runs advisory-only with exit-code 0, so scans do not block). Data-flow transparency rests on FAQ claims (OAuth consent, encrypted tokens, no persistence of integration content) — asserted, not demonstrated in provided code, so sensitive_data_handling gets 2. The product is a proactive multi-channel outbound assistant (WhatsApp/Telegram/Slack/Discord, scheduled workflows): large external-effects surface, mitigated but not eliminated by the notification approval gate, hence 2. Deploy rollback workflows (action=rollback with digest/last modes) justify 2.
CI docs describe a four-slice test matrix, 80% coverage gate, wide-event log contract checks, fail-loud policies and a runner watchdog — self-consistency documented, but no actual test code in the sample, conservatively 2. Lockfiles, pnpm overrides and Docker Compose support availability: 2. Failure messaging is strong at the infra level (orphan-image alerts, explicit step failures) but runtime product error handling is not evidenced: 2.
README targets personal-productivity users across cloud/self-host/desktop/mobile with concrete scenario examples — 3. Capability boundaries are partially marked (beta labels) but the autonomy-vs-approval boundary is explained informally — 2. Cron and multi-platform event triggers documented at moderate precision — 2. Environment fit documented (Docker 20.10+, Node 20+, Tailscale) but self-hosting complexity is high — 2.
Information architecture is excellent: TOC, monorepo map, docs site — 3. Install notes are concrete (3-step CLI, prerequisites, status/logs commands) — 3. FAQ is deep and practical — 3. Biggest deduction: licensing. LICENSE.md is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, which forbids commercial use, directly contradicting the repeated 'open source' claim in the README; registry metadata is NOASSERTION — a claim contradicted by evidence, so license gets 1. Release-please and conventional commits exist but no CHANGELOG in the sample — 2. Contributing guides and active CI show maintenance responsibility — 2.
The product targets a real pain point (cross-tool memory plus proactive workflows) with strong marginal value — 3. Output usability supported by screenshots and examples but unverified by execution — 2. Cost/benefit is transparent about real self-hosting costs (model APIs, VM), yet the many-database, many-queue architecture raises operational cost — 2.
README's CI/deploy claims corroborate against the workflow files themselves (build, rollback, release flows match in detail) — 2. Most assertions trace to docs or specific workflows, but the data-security claims (encrypted tokens, no persistence) point to code not present in the sample — 2. Facts and inferences are mostly separated (beta and coming-soon labels) — 2.
- License is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, forbidding commercial use; the README's 'open source' framing is misleading — verify licensing before any commercial adoption.
- Proactive multi-channel outbound (WhatsApp/Telegram/Slack/Discord) plus background workflows create a large external-effects surface: audit trigger conditions and the approval gate on outbound notifications before deploying.
- Data-security claims (encrypted tokens, no persistence of integration content) are README assertions only; verify storage and logging paths in code.
- Trivy runs in advisory mode (exit-code 0), so critical/high findings do not block release; no equivalent npm audit gate is evidenced.
- Publisher is unverified; self-hosting wires in many third-party SaaS services (Composio, E2B, Tavily, etc.) — watch supply-chain and outbound data paths.
Recent releases
Latest entries from the project's GitHub Releases. Notes are quoted from upstream as written, not rewritten or tested by FollowAgents.
-
Release notes excerpt
Beta of the GAIA CLI. Install it with: curl -fsSL https://heygaia.io/install.sh | GAIA_CHANNEL=beta shView on GitHub ↗ -
desktop-v0.7.1 desktop: v0.7.1
-
web-v0.25.0 web: v0.25.0