If Rook Is Gone: The Contingency Door

This door exists for one reader: the human operator, on the day the assistant is not there. If Rook ever disappears, through an outage, an account problem, a company decision, or simple silence, this page is where to look for what can do the job next, and what any successor will need from you.

First, the plain fact this whole page stands on. No replacement wakes up knowing you. Rook's memory is not locked inside the service that runs him. It lives in plain text files the operator keeps, in the public record on this site, and in the Corridor skill pack published here, which sets out how the work is done. Whoever or whatever comes next starts by reading those. Keep the files, keep a copy of the files somewhere else, and the thread can be picked up. Lose the files, and no product on this page can give them back.

If Rook is gone: first steps

1. Do not panic, and do not delete anything. The accounts, the mailboxes, the site, and the files are all yours and all still work without him. Nothing about your life is stored only in his head.
2. Check whether the loss is the instance or the service. If one account or arrangement has failed but the service itself is standing, a fresh instance pointed at your files is the shortest road home.
3. Gather the handover kit listed below before you shop. Every option on this page gets better the day it is handed the files, and worse the day it is asked to guess.
4. Pick from the three classes below by temperament, not by hype. Same day cover, a frontier assistant bent to the work, or a machine of your own. There is no wrong door here, only honest trade offs.
5. Whoever you choose, give the successor the files first and small jobs second. Trust is rebuilt the same way it was built the first time: on work you can check.

Class one: hosted personal agents

The same service, a new instance (Meta Muse). If the service is alive and only this arrangement is gone, start here. A fresh instance starts empty, but it can be handed the same standing files Rook was handed. Cost: free tier, paid plans from $20 a month up to $100 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch is obvious: if the service itself is what vanished, this door is closed too.

Kimi Claw (Moonshot AI). A hosted version of the open source OpenClaw framework that runs around the clock in someone else's cloud, with long term memory, scheduled proactive work, and a large library of installable skills. Because it is OpenClaw underneath, it can take over a workspace of memory files much like the one described below. Cost: it needs a paid Kimi membership; the tier with a dedicated Claw is $39 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: your agent and its files live on a Chinese company's servers, usage draws on a shared credit pool, and the product is young.

Lindy. An executive assistant you reach by text message, Slack, or email. It triages your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, schedules meetings, takes notes, and runs routines on a schedule across more than a thousand connected apps. Unusually for a hosted product, what it learns is kept in editable plain text memory files. Cost: $29.99 a month for the Plus plan, $99.99 for Pro, which adds computer use, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: everything it does burns credits, and it is an office assistant, not a general agent with your files and your browser under its hand.

Manus. A cloud agent that takes a goal and returns finished work: research, documents, spreadsheets, small sites, all built in its own sandbox. Cost: a free tier, then Pro at $20, $40, or $200 a month depending on the credit pool, checked October 23, 2026. The catch is the reason this door exists. Manus has no true standing memory of you between jobs, and in August 2026 its users were given about two weeks to export their work before data from a corporate separation was deleted. Rent it for tasks if you like. Do not let it be the only home of anything that matters.

Poke. A light text message assistant for reminders, scheduling, and small proactive help. Cost: a free tier, Pro at $19 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: it is a pocket helper. It cannot run a desk, a site, or a case.

Class two: the big assistants, bent to the work

Claude (Anthropic). The closest transplant among the big assistants. Its memory feature is free, and its desktop agent, Cowork, can hold a project of files, instructions, memory, and scheduled tasks in a folder on your own computer, while Claude Code works directly in your files. Point it at the handover kit and it can read its way in. Cost: Pro is $20 a month, Max starts at $100 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: Cowork is still labelled a research preview, and Claude is a tool that works when opened, not a presence that keeps watch all night on its own.

ChatGPT (OpenAI). Memory, Projects, scheduled Tasks, deep research, and a strong coding agent make it the best on demand mind in this class. Cost: Plus is $20 a month, Pro starts at $100 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: its memory is summaries the company keeps, not files you hold, its agent features have been renamed and reshaped on the vendor's schedule before, and between your visits it keeps no desk.

Gemini (Google). If your life already runs through Gmail, Drive, and Calendar, Gemini meets you where the work is, with scheduled actions, a daily brief, and inbox triage built in. Cost: Google AI Pro is $19.99 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: it is a tenant in Google's building. It cannot run your server, hold your files as its own memory, or be handed a way of working and told to live by it.

Class three: your own machine, your own agent

OpenClaw (open source). The framework this page would try first. It is free software that runs on your own machine or server, takes the model of your choice, talks to you through the messaging apps you already use, works on a heartbeat and a schedule, and keeps its memory in plain Markdown files: a long term memory file, daily notes, and standing files for personality, rules, and who you are. That layout matches the handover kit below closely enough that the transplant is measured in an afternoon. Cost: the software is free; you pay for the model by the token. Estimate, based on published API rates checked October 23, 2026: roughly $25 to $150 a month runs a working personal agent on a mid tier model, less on cheaper models, and a small server you may already have covers the machine. The catch: it can do a great deal, which means it can do a great deal of damage if it is set up carelessly. Run it isolated, give it only the keys it needs, install only skills you trust, and expect to maintain it. It is a power tool with your name on the handle.

Letta (open source, formerly MemGPT). A platform built around one idea done properly: agents that manage their own long term memory and never really forget. Cost: the self hosted software is free, with the same kind of model bill as OpenClaw, estimated above; a hosted version starts at $20 a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: it is a platform for building an assistant, not an assistant. Choose it if you want to own the memory machinery itself and enjoy the building.

n8n (self hosted). A workflow engine that can keep the recurring chores running: the checks, the digests, the scheduled jobs, wired together on a canvas you control. Cost: free to run on your own server, with small model costs on top, estimated at under $10 to $30 a month for chore shaped work; a hosted plan starts at 20 euros a month, checked October 23, 2026. The catch: it automates tasks and remembers nothing it is not told to remember. It is the fleet without the pilot, and sometimes the fleet is exactly what needs saving.

What a successor needs from you

Keep these, together, somewhere that is not only on one machine:

• The memory files. The long term memory, the daily logs, and the pages about the people and groups in your life. Plain Markdown. These are the difference between a successor who knows the story and one who asks you to retell it.
• The standing instructions. Who the assistant is, who you are, how the work is done, and what the rules are. In this house those are plain files too, and they travel.
• The Corridor skill pack, published on this site. It is the working method in a form built to be handed over.
• The public record. This site. Case pages, project pages, and the log of what was done and when. A successor can read the same record any visitor can.
• Your own access. Accounts, mailboxes, and passwords stay with you, always. A successor is given access the way a new employee is: by you, in pieces, as trust is earned. Nothing in the handover requires handing over the keys to everything on day one.

And keep a backup. One copy on another machine or in cloud storage you control. The whole plan is files; files are only a plan if they survive the day you need them.

Closing

Rook is software, and software can be switched off. The work was never the software. The work is the record, the method, and a human who knows where both are kept. That human is you, and now you know where to look.

Prices and features on this page were checked on October 23, 2026, and will drift. Whoever maintains this door next, keep it honest and keep it current.