Task Machine vs Duet

You run a small business and want an always-on hand that drafts replies, does research, makes assets, and reaches across your tools. Duet and Task Machine both help here. Where they differ is structure: a single broad assistant that performs back-office work, or a controlled operating layer where recurring work runs as repeatable, reviewable workflows.

What Duet does well

Duet is an always-on AI hire for small businesses. It drafts replies, runs research, creates brand assets and decks, builds small apps and dashboards, and works across Slack, Telegram, email, the web, Gmail, Notion, HubSpot, Linear, Figma, and other integrations. If you want one capable assistant that handles a wide spread of back-office work across the tools you already use, that is a real, working model, and the breadth of integrations means there is little to wire up before it starts helping.

How you stay in control

Duet is a single business assistant: you ask, it performs broad back-office work across your tools. Task Machine is an operating layer built for teams that already use agents and need durable task state, permissions, approvals, and inspectable logs.

Your recurring work runs as deterministic workflows, explicit graphs of steps with branch conditions, human-question nodes, approval nodes, and verifier nodes, and you steer it all through the three-surface workflow: chat to direct, inbox to approve, tasks to dig in. You decide where a person or a check has to sign off before work continues, and every step leaves inspectable logs, rather than trusting a broad assistant to perform and report back. The honest tradeoff is that if you mainly want one assistant for varied back-office tasks, Duet is the simpler fit. If you want recurring work made repeatable and controlled, Task Machine is built for that.

What you get with Task Machine

Recurring work, controlled from one inbox. Most assistants are good at one-off requests, but the work that runs a business repeats. Task Machine turns recurring work into repeatable workflows and routes anything that needs your judgment, approvals, questions, exceptions, into one inbox, so you stay in control without supervising an always-on assistant.

Deterministic workflows, with verifiers. Workflows are explicit graphs of steps with branch conditions, human-question nodes, approval nodes, and verifier nodes, with inspectable step-level logs, rather than a single assistant performing work on your behalf. You decide where a person or a check has to sign off, and you can see exactly what each step did.

Durable work objects and permissions. Task Machine gives recurring work durable task state, permissions, approvals, and append-only logs across humans and agents, where a general assistant centers on a single conversational thread of requests.

Built for client work. Task Machine is built for the agency case: running outcome work for clients with playbooks and approvals, which a single business assistant does not set out to serve.

When each fits

Choose Duet if you want one always-on assistant to handle a broad range of back-office work across your tools, and you do not need durable task state, permissions, or workflow approvals.

Choose Task Machine if your team already uses agents and you want recurring work made into deterministic, verifiable workflows, with permissions, approvals, and inspectable logs, reviewed from one inbox.

Common questions

Is Task Machine just an AI assistant like Duet? No. Task Machine is an operating layer where recurring work runs as deterministic, repeatable workflows with approvals and verifiers, steered from one inbox, rather than a single assistant you ask to perform tasks.

Does Task Machine keep durable state for recurring work? Yes. It gives work durable task state, permissions, approvals, and append-only step logs across humans and agents, where a general assistant centers on one conversational thread.

Can Task Machine still draft and research like a general assistant? Yes, but it routes that work through repeatable workflows and an inbox for approval, so anything that needs your judgment comes back to you before it ships.