Which AI does what
Four separate systems, and the one question that tells them apart.
There are four of these and they are genuinely different things, not four names for the same feature. The question that separates them is who decides, and does anything move?
| You reach for it to… | Where it lives | Does it change your work? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hoot | Ask a question, or tell it to do something now. | The assistant button on every page, and /hoot in chat. | Yes, immediately — inside your own permissions, and it tells you what it changed. |
| Autopilot | Hand one project's management to it. | On the Noot: its header button and its Autopilot tab. | Yes, within the autonomy level and horizon you set. Everything is listed and reversible. |
| Nooties | Get something *written* — a plan, a status draft, a risk readout, a standup. | /app/nooties, and the badge on a project you attached one to. | No. It writes; it never moves a task, changes a date or assigns a person. |
| Automations | Make the same thing happen every time, reliably. | /app/automations, and a project's Automations tab. | Yes — exactly what you wrote. It is not AI at all. |
Put another way
- Automations has no judgement, and that is the feature. It never calls a model. If you can state the rule, use this — it will be right every time and it logs every firing, including the ones a condition filtered out.
- Nooties have judgement and no hands. A Nootie reads the project's tasks and recent meetings and produces a document. The most it will do to your board is leave a labelled comment on a task when it finds something concrete.
- Autopilot has judgement *and* hands, but only over one project, and only as far as you let it — an autonomy level, a horizon, twelve capability switches and a set of guardrails, all of which are enforced on the server rather than requested of the model.
- Hoot has judgement and hands and no plan. It does what you just asked, once, and it can never exceed what you personally are allowed to do — every action re-checks that against the database, not against the conversation.
Hoot will not create or delete a project — it drafts one and hands you the ordinary creation card. Autopilot will not book a meeting without approval if you've asked it not to, and will never *apply* a change to your organization's teams. A Nootie will not move a task, change a date or assign a person. An Automation will not chain more than one hop.
If you can write the rule down, it's an Automation. If you'd have to explain it, it's Autopilot. If what you want is a document, it's a Nootie. If you want it done right now, ask Hoot.