Wabi pivots to AI messenger with on-demand app building capabilities

Wabi, the AI startup that allowed anyone to use prompts to build apps, is undergoing a slight pivot as demand for AI agents, like Meta’s Muse and Instinct, takes off. The company announced this week that Wabi is now becoming an AI messenger of sorts — but one that’s still capable of making apps to help you get things done.

The startup’s founder Eugenia Kuyda, who previously founded the AI companion startup Replika, described Wabi 2.0, as the new experience is called, as a “personal agent that does stuff for you and builds the interface you need in the moment.”

It’s a similar value proposition to that offered by the original version of Wabi — but one that users will interact with in a different way. Instead of positioning itself up against other vibe-coding tools, Wabi 2.0 aims to compete more directly with AI agents that combine both conversations and productivity tasks in a single interface.

It also comes as companies like OpenAI and others are thinking about how apps will work inside their more generalized chatbot user interfaces; for instance, OpenAI today announced at its Dev Day an update to ChatGPT’s plugins, which will allow apps to offer interactive experiences within ChatGPT, and where the app’s name gets pinned in a more visible spot on ChatGPT’s sidebar.

In a post on X, Kudya explained how Wabi’s new experience will make more sense for consumers, who want to do more than just type to an agent.

“The more you use a chat-only agent, the worse the experience gets. Your history and ongoing tasks end up buried in one endless scroll. People don’t just want to type-type-type; They want to tap-tap-tap, scroll, and look. They love what agents can do, but they also like software,” she wrote. “The most powerful agent will be the one that combines both.”

The idea is that as a user asks the agent to perform a task, it could create a user interface on demand to help complete whatever the request may be. For instance, Kudya suggested users could build things like a calorie tracker, a weightlifting log, and a weight tracker, which would be accessible in her thread about health-related topics.

In another thread focused on family, users could create a calendar of the kids’ activities, a language learning app, an app that keeps up with local kid-friendly events, and other things that relate to parenting, household management, or the kids’ interests.

“So far, personal agents have been one person, one chat, a stream of one-off tasks. We think the future is your agent, your apps, and your people in one place, running the parts of life that matter most, together,” wrote Kudya.