Hark Pro Launches $20-a-Month AI Assistant That Acts Before You Ask

Hark Pro, a new AI assistant from the startup Hark, is available now in a limited-use free version, with paid subscriptions starting at $20 a month — and it wants to do more than answer queries. The web app, also available on iOS and Android, is built to understand each user's tasks and needs and proactively find ways to help, rather than wait for directed commands like the AI chatbots rolled out by large tech companies and frontier labs.

Hark calls the product an "operating system for your life." With access to a user's email, calendar and other online accounts, the app can order lunch, pay bills and plan trips. It can also flag meeting conflicts and reschedule around them, book an appointment at a dentist that accepts a user's insurance, or notify a user that a rental car was reserved at the wrong airport — and then offer to fix it.

The company behind the product has serious backing. Hark, founded by Brett Adcock — who previously founded the EVTOL startup Archer Aviation and the humanoid robotics company Figure — has raised $700 million in series A funding since launching in late 2025. It has also hired engineering, AI and design talent from Apple and Tesla.

In a keynote video announcing Hark Pro's launch, Adcock called the product a personal intelligence tool and the first release in a planned reimagining of the personal computer for the age of AI. "Eventually I want Hark to handle all things I do on a computer, fully end-to-end, so that I never have to use a computer again, at least not a computer as we know it," he said.

What does the interface look like?

Hark Pro follows the familiar chatbot formula at first glance, with a text query box and a running log of exchanges. But the app presents itself more as a control panel, with a sidebar of widgets holding custom-designed apps, trackers and reminders connectable to any service a user relies on.

Abidur Chowdhury, Hark's head of design and former design lead for Apple's iPhone Air, calls it a homepage. Action items appear at the top, each with automatically rendered buttons that can pay a bill, make an appointment or approve an expense report. Chowdhury said Hark designed the interface to avoid the clunkier elements of rival AI platforms.

"We really didn't want to have this clogged sidebar with a bunch of the different chats that you've had," he said.

The tool keeps everything in one main chain, like a long text-message thread, with an option to break away into a Projects tab for longer-term work such as event planning or developing a business idea.

How does it build trust with users?

Hark Pro shows its work. Much of its capability comes from navigating the internet through its own computer, called Handoff — a notable detail given that the app holds control of a user's email and credit card number. When the tool performs a task, a small screen displays in the chatlog showing its internal computer moving through whatever website it is using.

"We think there's a huge trust-building that you get where you see, okay, it's navigating the right way, it's fast, it's doing its thing," Chowdhury said.

Design choices reinforce that personal relationship. The app's background mimics each user's time of day, shifting from soft blue at midday to amber at sunset to indigo at nightfall. "This is actually going to be different for every single person using the product. It's how we wanted to represent that this platform is completely personal to you," Chowdhury said.

How well does it work in practice?

Hark Pro's use cases range from prompting regular orders at coffee shops to auto-updating a calendar with a child's sports practices, notifying users when a frequently streamed band comes to town, or booking hotels and car service for work trips. The tool's deep access to a user's online record functions almost like memory — it can know which restaurants a user prefers, the typical price range of their work-trip hotel rooms, or how an aging pet's veterinary needs are evolving.

In a test of the beta version, Hark Pro noticed a car was due for an oil change from email data and offered to book an appointment before an upcoming trip. The entire booking process took less than five minutes, with only about 15 seconds of active user time.

"My favorite examples are when it takes something off your plate that you actually don't want to deal with," Chowdhury said, citing Hark Pro's recent suggestion to renew his own car registration. "It was actually a suggestion."

Can Hark compete with Meta and OpenAI?

Hark Pro's release follows other significant AI assistant launches in recent weeks, including Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots. Those tools share DNA with Hark Pro in their role as intermediaries between people and the web services they once accessed directly. How well Hark competes with these better-funded companies remains to be seen.

Hark's ambitions go further. The company plans to release its first hardware device in 2027. "Our goal as a company, to compare it to history, is to build the graphical user interface, the mouse, and the computer for this new era," Chowdhury said.

He described the upcoming device as "a completely new form factor, a new product, a new way of interacting" — with Hark Pro as the first step on that path.