Jarvie vs Sidekicks: which AI assistant to text
Both join a group thread you already have, which is the strongest structural position in this market. They differ on whether anyone in the thread is meant to notice.
Jarvie is for
Groups that want an agent with a personality and memory of the group.
Sidekicks is for
Groups that want a utility nobody has to think about, at a fixed price.
A group-chat sidekick with a published number, free while it works out what to charge for
- Posted doing a job
- 0
- public posts, each on the listing
- Of those, went wrong
- 0
- nothing posted yet
- Posts for it, against it
- 0 / 0
- nothing posted yet
Add a number to any iMessage or SMS group and it participates like a member
- Posted doing a job
- 0
- public posts, each on the listing
- Of those, went wrong
- 0
- nothing posted yet
- Posts for it, against it
- 0 / 0
- nothing posted yet
Jarvie and Sidekicks, side by side
They differ on getting in, price, trust and who runs it; a dot marks each row where they do.
| Jarvie | Sidekicks | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting in | ||
| Where do you text it? | iMessage, SMS. | iMessage, SMS. |
| How do you start? | Text a number. | Add a number to a group. |
| Does it work on Android? | Yes, over SMS. | Yes, over SMS. |
| Is there an app to install? | No app: nothing to install at any point. | No app: nothing to install at any point. |
| Who starts the conversation? | Messages you first. | Messages you first. |
| Price | ||
| What does it cost? | Free. | From $19.99 a month. |
| Trust | ||
| Does it train on my messages? | Qualified statement. | States it does. |
| What does it hold to log in for me? | Holds what it does not say; no security contact published. | Holds what it does not say; no security contact published. |
| What happens to my messages? | Who carries them is not published; it says what happens to people who never signed up. | Who carries them is not published. |
| Does it publish about its security? | Nothing published. | Nothing published. |
| Can it phone people? | It does not call. | It does not call. |
| Who runs it | ||
| Who is behind it? | All Day Technologies, Inc., San Francisco; funded. | Sidekicks LLC; funded. |
| How is it funded? | $8.3M seed announced June 2026, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Base10 Partners and Lightspeed participating. | Not published. Its own site names no company, no founders and no round: it publishes a phone number and nothing else about who is behind it. |
| What it can do, on its own pages | ||
| Persistent memory | Yes | Not stated |
| Web research | Yes | Not stated |
| Both | Group threads, Reminders. | |
What separates Jarvie and Sidekicks
Neither of these asks the second, third or fourth person to do anything. You add a number to an existing iMessage or SMS group and everyone is already onboarded, which is a property only four agents in this directory have and the single biggest advantage available here.
Jarvie coordinates plans, summarises what it has read, and builds persistent memory of the group's dynamics and the individuals in it. Its stated positioning is that AI is better with friends. It raised $8.3 million led by a16z with Base10 and Lightspeed, founded by Ken Chong.
Sidekicks is deliberately unobtrusive: shared reminders, settling debates, catching people up, and its stated design goal is that nobody else in the group needs to know what it is or do anything to use it. It is $19.99 a month for Pro, with a $200 tier above it, and you upgrade by texting it rather than through a checkout page.
On data, Jarvie is unusually direct for this category: its policy states "in a group, Jarvie processes the thread's messages to respond, and its replies are visible to everyone", which is one of the few acknowledgements anywhere that a group agent reads the messages of people who never signed up. Sidekicks' policy has users grant the company a licence to "process, analyze, and improve the Service using submitted content", which is a yes on training, and says nothing about the people in the thread who never signed up.
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