How Hark designed an AI assistant that’s actually helpful

FastCompany: With a chatbot interface and agentic capabilities, the new AI web application Hark Pro checks the main boxes of a mass market AI release in 2026. But unlike the tools that have already been released by the large tech companies and frontier AI labs, Hark Pro is rethinking the core premise behind the AI assistant. While many of the “everyday AI” chatbots that have rolled out over the last month focus primarily on fielding queries and using AI to follow directed tasks, Hark Pro is using its AI to understand the tasks and needs of each user, and proactively finding ways to help.

Hark , the startup behind Hark Pro, calls it an “operating system for your life.” Now available in a limited-use free version or more usage with paid subscriptions starting at $20 a month, Hark Pro is like a computer using a computer to organize information, find answers, and handle tasks. With access to a user’s email, calendar, and other online accounts, the app can do common tasks like ordering lunch, paying bills, and planning trips.

It can also do more proactive things like identifying meeting conflicts in your calendar and rescheduling around them, or making an appointment at a new dentist that takes your insurance, or notifying you that the car you rented for an upcoming trip is at the wrong airport—and then offering to fix it. [Image: Hark] Hark was founded by Brett Adcock, who previously founded the EVTOL startup Archer Aviation and the humanoid robotics company Figure .

Since Hark’s launch in late 2025, the company has raised $700 million in Series A funding and gone on a hiring spree that’s brought in engineering, AI, and design talent from companies like Apple and Tesla. In a keynote video announcing Hark Pro’s launch, Adcock calls Hark Pro a personal intelligence tool, and the first release of what he plans to be a dramatic reimagining of the personal computer for the age of AI. “Eventually I want Hark to handle all things I do on a computer, fully end-to-end, so that I never have to use a computer again, at least not a computer as we know it,” he says.

[Image: Hark] A customizable interface Testing out the beta version of Hark Pro ahead of its launch, the tool appears to follow the familiar chatbot formula, with a text query box and a running log of queries and responses. But instead of just a simple ask-and-answer interface, Hark Pro appears in its web app (also on iOS and Android) as more of a control panel, with a sidebar of individual widgets that hold custom-designed apps, trackers, and reminders that you can connect to any services you use.

Abidur Chowdhury, head of design at Hark and the former design lead for Apple’s iPhone Air, calls it a homepage, and it’s designed to be easily customizable while also prioritizing the main tasks or problems it can help solve on any given day. Action items appear at the top of this homepage, each with automatically rendered action buttons that can pay the bill, make the appointment, or approve the expense report. Chowdhury says Hark has tried to design this interface to avoid some of the clunkier elements of other AI platforms. “We really didn’t want to have this clogged sidebar with a bunch of the different chats that you’ve had,” he says.

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The article highlights a significant advancement in AI assistant design that could influence brand strategy and user experience, making it highly relevant and novel for industry professionals.