alt Hacker NewsMicrosoft announces Scout, an autonomous AI agent built on OpenClaw
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Wow, listening to the article [a], with the flat, tinny AI voice - it's hard to shake the feeling that this is satire.
And in the YouTube video, I think I glimpse the AI delegating and assigning work to the user (hey, you should review this file/presentation) - via Teams or some other chat interface that probably grabs your attention with an obnoxious ping!
Ironically, the vision they seem to be peddling looks quite close to what NocoBase[n] is selling.
Key difference being that NocoBase at least try to increase human agency.
They both suffer a bit from 4gl flaws; how do you version your code, how do you move it to another system, eg when changing employer.
Like, how do bring your customized Chad - senior assistant - with you to Google workspace or fastmail?
For NocoBase AFAIK they have modules, but no real versioning - so I don't see how it is a good fit for developers.
I just recently came across it as I was looking for a ticketing system - and no, I don't want to build my own in a 4gl system if I can help it. But holy shit would I be more inclined to let our org users play with NocoBase rather than set things on fire with chaos agents running on top of OpenClaw!
PS: We looked at libreDesk (too simple, missing things like merging issues) - looks like we'll go for FreeScout.
I'm kind of sad that Trac/Apache bloodhound died (and I think died, not just became feature complete) - they worked pretty well for email first support tickets.
[a] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2026/06/0...
Microsoft is still going to win because they are the no risk option for many businesses but wow I might actually be embarrassed to be part of these efforts. I hate to use such hyperbolic language too but they have continued year over year for the past 3 years failed to deliver in AI. From the useless frameworks they have been building on the Azure side, the partnership with Anthropic where they are still building copilot to be uniquely their own (and confusing) and now this. It is extremely interesting to watch this unfold!
Minor point, but is there a trademark issue here with Yahoo Scout? (the Yahoo finance AI summaries widget)
I'm sorry, did OpenClaw improve by orders of magnitude in the last couple of months? Maybe so because it was an absolute dumpster fire when I looked at it, you could taste the "vibe" it was so poorly put together, I can't imagine anyone respectable building on top of it, better to just steal the compelling ideas (agent with a cron wrapper)
I bet it‘ll start changing people‘s docs and sending emails without being asked to do so and then they have to dial it back.
Neat! I have plenty of time to read these Microsoft announcements today because Microsoft 365 exchange online is borked and my emails aren’t going out and teams in browser is jank-city.
The idea that people are desperate to get AI assisted support to book meetings or flights is utterly barking
TAX THE TOKENS
100%
Don't let these companies take from our societies without giving back
politicians: if you aren't taxing the tokens you ain't getting my vote
>Microsoft Scout connects to apps such as Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint, and accesses data from chat, email, calendar, and contacts.
There's a running joke that you don't pay some mariachis for singing, you tip them to get them to go away.
In a similar vein, Maybe Microsoft can figure out how to monetize not having to use Windows as a service.
"You don't have to use teams and outlook any longer" is certainly a nice pitch.
OpenClaw just seems so broken and insecure by-design. I feel like you'd have to be crazy to use it.
And its fuel are github copilot ai credits, burned in 2 days. Good luck habing a running business on scout and your credits are gone.
What did i just read? Microsoft putting their name in total vibe coded slop that breaks every release and super bloated? And coding it is not even that hard
I'm confused, did they forget to add "Copilot" in the name?
Mark Zuckerberg has thrown how much into AI and Microsoft is passing them by as if they don't even exist. You know that meme about how IE is the browser eating paste, while Firefox and Chrome fight it out... Meta AI is the "kid" eating paste, while Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft duke it out.
Edit for those curious:
https://devhumor.com/content/uploads/images/August2016/Chrom...
This reminds me of when Microsoft announced Bing Chat (which became Copilot) as a thin wrapper around ChatGPT. It turned out their value added wasn't integration, but tanking the quality and usefulness of it.