AI Secretary vs Orb

AI Secretary and Orb are both personal assistants tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

AI Secretary

Telegram AI Secretary is a self-hosted Python daemon that listens to a Telegram account via Telethon, runs each incoming message through configurable notification rules and an LLM filter, then fires only the alerts that pass to your phone through ntfy. Setup requires a working Python environment, Telegram API credentials, an LLM endpoint, and an ntfy instance — none of which come pre-configured. The filtering logic lives in notification_rules.py, which you edit directly; there is no UI. It handles muted groups, direct urgency signals, and same-day scheduling well. It does not handle anything beyond single-message evaluation — no thread awareness, no conversation memory across sessions.

Orb

Orb Backend handles the server side of a voice-and-agent assistant that does not wait to be asked. The repo ships a Python backend with…

Attribute	AI Secretary	Orb
Pricing	Free	—
Free trial	No	No
Open source	Yes	No
Has API	No	No
Self-hosted option	Yes	No
Platforms	Python	—
Pros	LLM-assisted urgency evaluation catches natural-language signals like 'I'm outside' or 'free tonight?' that keyword rules miss, so messages requiring a real response get through even when Telegram is fully muted. Fully self-hosted with no external service dependency beyond your chosen LLM endpoint, which means your message content never touches a third-party notification broker. Editing notification_rules.py gives you direct control over filter logic without an abstraction layer between your intent and execution, so rule changes take effect on the next restart without waiting on a vendor's UI. ntfy as the delivery target works on Android and iOS without a proprietary app, so you receive filtered alerts on standard push infrastructure you likely already run. MIT license with a systemd unit file included, so deploying this as a persistent background service on a Linux machine is a copy-paste operation rather than a packaging project.	—
Cons	Each message is evaluated in isolation with no conversation memory across sessions, so follow-up messages that only make sense in context — 'still waiting', 'did you see my last message' — can fail the urgency filter even when the original message would have passed; teams who need thread-aware filtering have to maintain their own context-injection layer or abandon this tool for a hosted alternative. All configuration changes require editing Python source files directly and restarting the process; there is no API, no web UI, and no hot-reload, which means non-technical household members or teammates cannot adjust their own notification rules without developer involvement. The tool listens to a single Telegram account only — no multi-account support, no other messaging platforms — so anyone filtering across Signal, WhatsApp, or multiple Telegram accounts simultaneously has to run and maintain separate instances or switch to a unified notification management service.	—

Bottom line

AI Secretary is open source. Choose based on which difference matters most for your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between AI Secretary and Orb?

AI Secretary is Free and open source, while Orb is unknown pricing. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is AI Secretary better than Orb?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.