I Threw My Real Workday at two AI Agents. One Failed Spectacularly

Why Real-World Tests Matter

My inbox is drowning in pitches for AI agents. My feed is a never-ending parade of hype, proclaiming this as "the year of the AI agent." Honestly? It’s exhausting. Because until recently, I hadn’t encountered an AI agent that genuinely changed how I worked. Most agents still felt like expensive digital interns—lots of promise, lots of supervision, and plenty of frustration.

Then Comet came along.

The magic of Comet, surprisingly, isn’t just its AI capabilities. It’s the user interface. That might sound counterintuitive—aren’t we here for the AI? But the truth is, great UI turns a powerful AI into a seamless part of your workflow. Bad UI, on the other hand, makes even the smartest AI feel painfully inadequate.

Let me give you some perspective. I’ve tried every agent out there. Tools like Zapier and newer solutions like n8n require serious setup. They’re valuable, sure, but only for highly specific tasks. They excel at taking care of the thing you have to do 100x. Try doing something slightly outside that agent’s wheelhouse, and you’ll quickly realize you’ve signed up for a second full-time job: supervising the AI that's supposed to save you time.

Then there was Operator from OpenAI—a tool I genuinely wanted to love. The vision was compelling: the full power of ChatGPT navigating the web on my behalf. But in practice, Operator’s UI was a nightmare. A cramped, sluggish browser trapped inside a chat window. Basic tasks took forever. Logging into Gmail was a Herculean feat. It felt less like assistance and more like punishment.

And you know what? That’s an assessment after it got about 5x better when they hooked o3 to it! o3 was a huge improvement for Operator, but not enough to make it a daily driver.

Comet changed all that by recognizing one fundamental truth: the ideal AI assistant is invisible. It does the job and gets out of your way. You only need to see assistants now because you don’t trust them. Comet suggests the time for some meaningful agent trust is here (at least in limited ways).

I was mid-scroll through Substack today (obvi, love you guys) when I remembered a scheduling conflict. Instead of context-switching, Comet effortlessly rescheduled my meeting from a sidebar, drafted the calendar change, and even composed a polite follow-up email—without ever forcing me to switch tabs. Seamless, fast, intuitive.

This isn’t about technical benchmarks. It’s about real-world, messy tasks—the ones we all deal with every day. Finding an overlooked Indonesian restaurant I’d somehow missed (yes real and obviously top prio), rapidly sifting through LinkedIn contacts affected by layoffs, or pulling actionable insights from Amazon’s recent filings to inform strategic decisions. Tasks that previously required multiple browser windows, dozens of clicks, and endless patience.

That's why I ran eight brutally honest tests. Not sanitized demos, but genuine, everyday scenarios—tasks that make or break a workday. I wasn't looking for perfection. I was looking for genuine value.

Comet delivered and it feels very weird to say that confidently. But I gotta follow the evidence. And the evidence is unambiguous.

All this matters because we’re at an inflection point. If we're paying $200/month for a tool, it better justify every cent by saving us measurable, valuable time. The difference between hype and reality comes down to rigorous testing in real-world conditions. If an AI agent can't handle your actual, messy workflow, it's not an assistant—it's just noise.

Don’t believe me? Outstanding. Excellent. Please don’t. But you can feel free to check out the actual eight real workflow tests I ran today, look at the results and notes, check out my ROI math framework, and then do a test run on your real work. Decide for yourself is our mantra over here.

I'm not here to convince you to spend $200 lol—I’m here to be a sane place on the internet where we try these things on like actual work (not fancy tests models overfit) and we see if they deliver actual value.

Comet did. Read on for how (and also a detailed side-by-side with Operator, which got all the exact same tests).