Always-on agents are here. The humble todo still matters.

At the end of September 2026, OpenAI introduced Dots, persistent agents that keep working after you close the tab, each with its own cloud computer and browser, reaching users through ChatGPT, Slack and Microsoft Teams, as reported by SiliconANGLE. Other companies are building the same thing under different names. The pitch is that you hand over a goal and the agent carries it forward.

It is reasonable to ask whether a todo list still matters when software can do the tasks. We think it matters more.

An agent needs to know what you want

An agent can follow a goal. It cannot know which goals you have, which ones matter this week, or which promise you made in a corridor that is not written anywhere. That information starts in your head, and the first step of getting it anywhere, to a colleague, to a list, or to an agent, is writing it down.

The capture step is not the part being automated. It is the input to everything that is.

Delegation works best from a clear line

Whether you hand a task to a person or a program, the quality of the hand-off depends on how clearly it is written. “Sort out the vendor thing” is a poor brief for anyone. “Get three quotes for the office move, under 8,000, by 20 November” can be acted on. The habits in how to write todos you will actually do are the same habits that make a task delegable.

Some tasks should never leave your machine

Agents work by reading. An always-on agent connected to chat, email and documents sees a lot, and the more it sees, the more it can do, and the more you have to trust it. Some of what crosses your mind is not for any of that: a note about a colleague, a personal reminder, an idea you are not ready to share.

A local capture layer gives those thoughts somewhere to live that no agent reads. Jot keeps everything in a local database and makes no network calls unless you switch on a feature that needs one. If you use its optional AI features, it follows a simple rule: it suggests, you confirm, and nothing is filed automatically. We wrote about that in AI that asks before it acts.

Small tools are not obsolete

Every few years a new wave of software promises to make simple tools unnecessary. The simple tools tend to survive because they do one thing reliably. We made the broader case in small tools in the AI everything era.

What we expect to change

The likely shape of the next few years is a split. Agents will take on more multi-step work in shared systems. Individuals will still need a fast, private place to catch intentions before they are lost, and a habit of reviewing them. The second part is not glamorous, and it is not going away.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.