There are several products called Muse. This article is about Meta’s personal AI agent, launched on 8 September 2026. It is not Microsoft’s gameplay model or Sudowrite’s fiction model. Meta’s Muse runs in its own cloud computer and keeps working after you close the app.
Grok Bot shares the same broad idea, but aims at work. Both products give an agent a persistent computer in the cloud. What separates them is the trust boundary.
The shared idea
A normal chatbot answers and waits. Grok Bot and Muse act inside software, keep context and carry on without your device. Both come back when an action needs approval. Muse, for example, asks before it sends an email or makes a purchase.
This changes the questions you should ask. What can the agent see? What can it send? Which control can stop it? Where do credentials live? The two products give quite different answers.
Where the agent runs
Grok Bot lets you create several named Bots with different jobs. They can run in parallel, message each other, share group chat context and hand tasks to one another. Yet all your Bots share one cloud computer, including its files, browser sessions and application logins. The computer belongs to your account, not to one Bot. Isolation is strict between users, not between a user’s Bots. The Grok Bot overview states this directly.
The shared machine makes handoffs easy. It also means separate Bots are not separate security zones. The documentation says not to use them as a security boundary. Anything placed on the computer is available to every Bot.
Muse has one personal agent per person. Its Secure VM is a dedicated Linux machine containing the agent and that person’s data. Inside it, the agent harness, workspace and tools run in a restricted runtime cell. Host side services sit outside that cell. Meta describes this as two isolated security domains on one box.
Root inside the cell maps to an unprivileged host user. The cell has its own filesystem, filtered system calls and limited capabilities. In our view, this is the central distinction. Grok Bot draws the main isolation line around the person. Muse also draws a line below the agent itself.
Memory and context
Each Grok Bot retains stable preferences, role context and summaries of earlier work. Conversations and learned context remain separate by Bot. Files, browser sessions, group messages and handoffs can carry context across Bots. The documentation advises checking the current source for important decisions instead of trusting memory alone.
Muse offers one long main conversation plus side chats. Its memory persists across conversations. You can inspect, edit and download its memory files. Meta’s design site also describes a Goals tab, an activity log and interactive Artifacts.
Grok Bot organises memory around named work roles on a shared machine. Muse organises it around one person and one continuing agent. Pick the shape that matches your work: several roles, or one personal thread.
Scheduling and background work
Grok Bot separates reusable instructions from timing. A skill explains how to perform a task. A routine tells one Bot when to run it. You can demonstrate a browser workflow for up to ten minutes, then review the draft skill created from it. The documentation recommends testing a skill once before making it routine.
Routines can start on a schedule or after supported events, including Slack messages, emails, webhooks and events from GitHub, Linear, Sentry or PagerDuty. They continue in the cloud while your laptop is closed.
Muse also works on schedules and in response to relevant events. It can contact you without a fresh prompt, with a setting that controls how proactive it should be. Meta says it notifies you when something is new or needs input.
Tools and integrations
Grok Bot uses connectors where they exist and computer use for everything else, with a browser, a filesystem and a terminal. It can also run commands, read files and move files on your own machine through the desktop app. Local commands require approval by default.
Muse includes connectors for third party systems and Meta applications such as Instagram and Facebook. It can write custom connectors for services that expose an API or command line interface. Its VM has enough resources to compile code, develop skills, run concurrent subagents and execute scheduled jobs.
For browser work, Muse gives its browser agent an accessibility tree rather than the raw page. That agent cannot run JavaScript. Credentials supplied through a dedicated interface are injected only when needed. Its email connector filters one time codes, password resets and magic links.
The security model
Grok Bot
A Bot acts as the signed in member and has no identity of its own. It cannot hold more access than that person. Connector tokens remain on Cursor’s backend and never reach the cloud computer. Login, two factor authentication and payment steps return control to the member. Secure secret requests keep values away from the transcript and model.
Risky actions can pass through Auto Review, an independent review model. It checks shell commands, connector calls, computer use, changes to routines and triggers, and delegation. It may allow, deny or request human approval. Auto Review does not inspect every side effect, including memory writes and most settings changes.
Enterprise administrators can restrict network destinations. Teams without a network policy allow all destinations by default. Outside content is marked as untrusted, but Cursor says its controls reduce rather than remove prompt injection risk. So Grok Bot pairs model based review with deterministic controls: approvals, network policy, limited identity and per user isolation.
Muse
Muse puts its decisive control outside the agent’s runtime cell. Sentinel is a separate host side agent and the sole permission authority for connector actions and network egress. It inspects network requests, including destination, port, method and path, and applies protection against server side request forgery. Meta says Muse proposes actions, while Sentinel grants permission.
The agent sees surrogate tokens, not real credentials. Sentinel replaces them at the network boundary. A process that reads user data becomes tainted and loses automatic permission for egress, falling back to approval. Requests reach the client interface directly rather than passing through the conversation. Permission may cover one action, a session, a task, a period or an ongoing grant.
Meta publishes far more low level detail about its isolation design. That is useful. A published design is still not independent verification. Reuters reported that internal tests found stalls and unauthorised exposure of sensitive data. Meta has opened a bug bounty of up to $300,000.
Data and privacy
Grok Bot runs only on Cursor hosted computers, currently in the United States. On premises deployment and customer supplied machine images are not supported. Cursor chooses the models, with no customer model picker. With Privacy Mode enabled, customer data is not used for training. Anysphere says Grok Bot sits within its ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 scope.
With Muse, files, memory and credentials live in the user’s VM. Conversations and VM data are not shared with Meta’s advertising systems, although browsing counts as the user’s activity and may influence advertising indirectly. Sanitised trajectories are used for training by default, with an opt out. Meta says the present architecture does not stop it accessing data when needed to support, secure or operate the service. A user keyed Confidential VM is planned for later in 2026.
Grok Bot is available through desktop applications on macOS, Windows and Linux, plus iOS and Android. Muse launched in the United States on iOS, Android and the web, with support for AI glasses announced as coming soon. Grok Bot is tied to paid Cursor access or eligible linked subscriptions. Muse offers a free level and paid Power and Maximum plans.
When to pick which
- Pick Grok Bot when you want several named work agents, team handoffs, work system triggers and Enterprise administration. Accept that your Bots share one computer and must not be treated as isolated from each other.
- Pick Muse when you want one continuing personal agent, readable memory, consumer tasks and a security boundary placed beneath the agent at the operating system and network layers. At launch, you must also be in the United States.
- Pick neither yet if your risk review requires deployment inside your own perimeter, or if the available controls and published evidence do not meet your standard.
The boundary is the product
Our view: Grok Bot is the clearer fit for organised work across several agent roles. Muse presents the more explicit low level isolation design for one personal agent. Neither wins in general.
So ask one question of any agent: where does authority sit when the model is wrong? Grok Bot puts strong controls around a shared computer owned by one user. Muse puts a gate below the agent, inside one user’s VM. Same cloud computer idea. Different trust boundary.