Product1 publisher3 min readPublished
Brett Adcock's Hark prices its background AI assistant by the usage multiple
Hark, the startup run by Figure AI's Brett Adcock, launched Hark Pro free on web, iOS and Android, with $20 and $100 monthly plans for 2x and 10x usage. The paid plans buy more use of an agent that works in the background, so buying one depends on which errands it handles better than a person would.
The Product Desk · Product desk
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What happened
- Next to the prompt box, a panel of proactive cards suggests actions drawn from the email and third-party services a user connects.
- Typed requests go to Handoff, a cloud computer that spent several minutes ordering a Filet-O-Fish on DoorDash in a demo and left Chowdhury only the payment to confirm.
- Head of design Abidur Chowdhury introduced the iPhone Air at Apple's September 2025 keynote, left Apple two months later and now leads design at Hark.
- Hark is building hardware to run Hark Pro but was not ready to share any details of it at launch.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost A heavy user on the $100 plan pays five times the $20 price for five times the headroom, so buying more usage gets no discount.
- decision Because Hark sells plans as multiples of the free tier, the free tier is the only place a team can measure what its own errands use before paying.
- exposure Some cards authorize deliveries or pay for things, so whoever rolls Hark Pro out grants inbox and payment access before seeing any return.
Gizmodo's reviewer watched the Filet-O-Fish order go through. He then pointed out that he could have opened the DoorDash app and finished it faster himself [15]. Chowdhury replied that agents let people decide how to spend their time [16]. "Like I'm spending it talking to you and focusing on doing this demo while it's doing it on my behalf," he told Gizmodo [17].
Hark calls the product a proactive "operating system for your life" [2]. What teams tell themselves users want is a way out of the chat window. "I think it's hilarious that right now AI is essentially where you have a chatbot and you type into it and it gives you a response," Chowdhury said [7]. "Our goal as a company is almost to build a graphical user interface to this future technology," he said, describing the aim as trying "to build the mouse, which is like the interaction method with this future piece of technology" [8][9].
What users do in the build Gizmodo saw is type into a prompt box, which Hark calls the composer, and read the response [10]. The new parts sit around that box. Gizmodo's writer said he had seen versions of the card stack from Gemini, Siri AI, Samsung Galaxy AI and Poppy [12]. Handoff is the part that acts for the user [13].
The price list is the most specific thing in the launch. Twice the usage costs $20 a month and ten times costs $100 [3]. Each price divided by its multiple comes to $10 [19]. Gizmodo's account does not define a unit of usage. If a several-minute fast-food order uses up the allowance the way a long research job does, the simple errand is the worst one to hand over [14].
This is one company's price list. It shows Hark selling capacity in multiples [3], and on its own it cannot show that agent products as a group are moving to usage pricing.
The card examples come from an office worker's queue: an approval a colleague is waiting on, receipts headed to Ramp for reimbursement, a delivery to authorize, a flight check-in [11].
A team choosing between the free plan and the two paid ones can sort a week of its own errands on two axes. One is whether the person would finish the task faster by hand. The other is whether their attention is needed elsewhere while the agent works.
- Faster by hand, attention free: do it by hand. The DoorDash order lands here for anyone at a desk with the app open, going by the Gizmodo writer's account [15]. - Faster by hand, attention busy: Chowdhury's demo [17]. Handing it over makes sense if a wait of several minutes does not matter [14]. - Slower by hand, attention free: multi-step searches, such as finding a nearby dentist, where Gizmodo's writer expected the agent to be more efficient [18]. - Slower by hand, attention busy: the box where a $10 multiple has the best chance of paying for itself [19].
If that last box holds a few tasks a week, the free tier covers the team. If it fills up, both paid plans charge the same per multiple, so the $20 plan is the cheaper way to learn how much usage the team actually consumes [19].
What to watch
- Whether Hark defines a unit of usage, and whether a Handoff session counts against the allowance differently from a card or a typed message.
- Details of the hardware Hark says it is building to run Hark Pro; the company shared none at launch.
- Whether other agent assistants start selling plans as usage multiples, the evidence a category-wide pricing claim would need.