Yao
Yao Agents is a self-hosted AI agent runtime that runs autonomous agents across every computer you own.
Yao Agents earns its place if you already own idle hardware and want agents that survive a reboot. The Kanban board plus smart inbox make it something you can leave running overnight rather than a demo, and the September 2026 Tao gateway removes the usual model-access friction — one credit key covering DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GPT Image 2.5, Jev and four OCR providers. Pass if nobody on your team will own host setup, or if you need a large connector library out of the box.
Verified 5d ago · liveness 72/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/yao
- Developers who want autonomous AI agents running on hardware they control
- Privacy-focused teams with rules about where data can live
- ML and ops teams with idle GPU boxes, NAS units or spare laptops
- Enterprises wiring agent-created tasks into apps via a standard SSE/WebSocket API
- Teams with nobody willing to own host setup and ongoing maintenance
- Buyers who want a fully managed SaaS with zero local install
- Groups expecting a large library of pre-built third-party connectors
We scan live Reddit threads, YouTube comments, X posts, G2 reviews and other communities — and hand you an honest verdict in under a minute.
- Honest verdict, not marketing
- Real pros & cons from real users
- Attributed quotes with receipts
3 free scans · no card needed
Skip Yao Agents if nobody on your team wants to own host setup and maintenance and you'd rather pay a cloud vendor to run the engine for you.
Tao — the gateway for models, search, fetch and storage — bills in credits, so every model call, search and fetch draws down a balance rather than sitting inside a flat fee.
Yao Agents publishes a single Open Source tier at $0 — the software is free and you bring your own hardware. The real spend sits outside the license: Tao credits for models, search, fetch and storage, plus whatever the machines cost you. That puts it well below per-seat cloud agent platforms for a team with existing spare hardware, and above them if you have to go buy a GPU box to run it.
In short
Yao — Yao Agents is a self-hosted AI agent runtime that runs autonomous agents across every computer you own. Best for Developers who want autonomous AI agents running on hardware they control, Privacy-focused teams with rules about where data can live, ML and ops teams with idle GPU boxes, NAS units or spare laptops. Free to start; it also has paid plans, priced in a currency we have not confirmed — see the pricing table for the vendor’s own figures.
What's new in Yao
Checked 6 days agoAcross the latest 10 updates: 5 feature updates, 4 launches and 1 changelog entry.
Tao Is Live — One Key for Every Model and Service
Tao launches as Yao Agents' capability gateway for models, search, fetch and storage — one key billed in credits. New signups get 1,000 credits.
Jev Is Live — Structured Decisions Inside Your Agent
Jev, TypeSafe AI's System One model, is now available in Yao Agents through Tao. It returns typed decisions with confidence instead of free text.
Account Migration: Cloud Service → Tao Service
Yao Agents begins migrating accounts from Cloud Service to Tao Service on September 23, 2026 at 15:00 UTC, switching on the new account system.
DeepSeek V4.1 Is Here, Plus GPT Image 2.5 for Image Generation
Yao Agents adds the DeepSeek V4.1 Flash family with three thinking levels, and brings in GPT Image 2.5 for image generation and editing.
Android Beta Is Live — Command Your Computers From Your Phone
Yao Agents ships an Android beta. Experts still run on your own computers; the phone app assigns work and tracks progress.
OCR Is Here — Read Scans, Photos, and PDFs
Yao Agents gains built-in OCR supporting PaddleOCR, Baidu OCR, Google Cloud Vision and Azure Document Intelligence.
DeepSeek Can See Now
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp is live in Yao Agents, selectable from DeepSeek or OpenCode Go when adding a model provider.
DeepSeek Harness: Use It Across Your Devices
Yao Agents includes DeepSeek Harness, usable in the desktop app or browser across all your devices.
Cloud Servers Are Live — No Engine, No Setup, Just Go
Yao Agents adds cloud server support, skipping the local install. A Beijing node is live for trial.
Kanban Board + Inbox — Queue It Up, AI Knocks It Down
Yao Agents adds a task board and smart inbox: queue work, agents run the list, and you get pinged on completion or when input is needed.
What people actually say about Yao — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
74 mentions across 6 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Bluesky, Stack Overflow, GitHub, Lemmy) · researched Jul 24, 2026.
Average across the 6 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Single binary, zero external dependencies for quick setup.
- +Full self-hosting on ARM64/x64, edge to cloud.
- +Built-in Kanban task board and smart inbox.
- +30+ pre-built assistants for coding, writing, research.
- +Sandboxed code execution improves security.
- −Very limited community feedback — hard to verify claims.
- −No beginner-friendly tutorials or onboarding guides found.
- −Only 5 GitHub issues tracked, indicating low user activity.
- −Integration ecosystem is narrow (only Claude, OpenClaw, DeepSeek).
- −JSON/YAML DSL may be a barrier for non-developers.
- • Self-hosting hardware and maintenance costs
- • Potential future paid tiers for cloud features
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Yao? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Self-hosted single-binary runtime — no Node.js or Python required
- Run agents across Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker, VMs and edge hardware
- Per-device workspaces keep tasks and knowledge isolated across machines
- Kanban task board queues agent work and runs tasks concurrently
- Smart inbox collects results and pings you on completion or when input is needed
- Conversation-to-task flow: describe work in chat and it lands on the board
- Agent output accumulates into documents that become a shared knowledge base
- Any node can read what it needs from another node's knowledge
- Tai Link cross-NAT device connectivity without port forwarding or VPN
- Agent Smith builds an AI expert agent from a plain-language description
- Tao gateway: one credit-billed key for models, search, fetch and storage
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash family with three thinking levels
- DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp for vision-capable agents
- GPT Image 2.5 for image generation and editing
- Jev (TypeSafe AI System One) returns typed decisions with confidence
About Yao
Yao Agents is a self-hosted runtime for autonomous AI agents that spread work across machines you already own. Install a single binary on an old laptop, a Linux NAS, a GPU box or a cloud VM and you get the data, API, agent and UI layers together, with no Node.js or Python stack to maintain. Each computer you add becomes an isolated workspace, so a DevBox running CI tests stays separate from an Office machine triaging support tickets or a GPU box fine-tuning a classifier. The workflow is deliberately physical. Describe what you need in a conversation and it lands on a Kanban task board; agents pull tasks off the board and run them concurrently across machines, while a smart inbox collects results and pings you when a job finishes or needs a decision. Everything agents produce accumulates into documents that become a knowledge base, and any node can read what it needs from another. Capability-wise, the September 2026 Tao gateway now covers models, search, fetch and storage on one credit-billed key, with 1,000 credits for new signups. Providers include the DeepSeek V4.1 Flash family with three thinking levels, DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp for vision, GPT Image 2.5 for image generation and editing, and Jev from TypeSafe AI, which returns typed decisions with confidence rather than free text. Built-in OCR reads scans, photos and PDFs through PaddleOCR, Baidu OCR, Google Cloud Vision and Azure Document Intelligence. Tai Link handles cross-NAT connectivity so agents reach remote devices without port forwarding, Agent Smith builds an expert agent from a plain-language description, and an Open API with SSE and WebSocket support plugs agent-created tasks into your own apps. This is infrastructure, not a seat-based SaaS subscription: you run the engine, your data stays on your hardware, and you scale by adding a computer. Closest neighbours are self-hosted automation engines like n8n, though the agents here are autonomous and cross-device rather than a static graph — and
Behind the Verdict
The pitch that matters here isn't 'agents' — everyone sells those. It's that agents run on the machines you already bought. A GPU box doing fine-tuning, a NAS doing nightly backups, an old Windows laptop triaging tickets: each becomes its own workspace with its own task queue, and the board coordinates across all of them. Pick Yao Agents when you have hardware sitting under-utilised and a reason to keep data on it. Privacy rules, residency requirements, or simply the cost of renting equivalent GPU time all push you toward self-hosting. The single binary is the real selling point — no Node.js, no Python, no dependency tree to nurse. We'd reach for this when a team already administers a Linux box and just wants to add work capacity by plugging in another computer. It also suits people who dislike graph builders. Describe the job in chat, it becomes a Kanban card, agents knock it down. The smart inbox is what makes that tolerable at scale: instead of watching a terminal, you get pinged when something finishes or blocks. Accumulating documents into a shared knowledge base that every node can read is the part that compounds — one machine's output becomes another's context. The capabilities landed fast in 2026. OCR arrived in September covering PaddleOCR, Baidu OCR, Google Cloud Vision and Azure Document Intelligence, which matters if your agents touch scanned invoices or photographed forms. Jev is the more interesting addition: typed decisions with confidence rather than prose, which is what you want when an agent's output feeds straight into code. GPT Image 2.5 covers image generation and editing; DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp handles the vision side. The Android beta lets you assign work and watch progress from a phone, though the agents still run on your own
Researching Yao? Get your full AI stack in 60 seconds.
Free, no signup — tell us your goal and get tools matched to your budget & existing stack.
Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Yao actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Install the single binary on both machines, add them as separate workspaces, and describe a nightly job in conversation — scrape public listings, compile a summary, drop it in documents.
Outcome: The task lands on the Kanban board, an agent runs it on the NAS while the laptop handles something else, and the smart inbox pings when the report is ready.
Add the GPU box as a workspace, connect DeepSeek V4.1 Flash through Tao, and queue fine-tuning and training-data processing tasks alongside the office machine's support-ticket triage.
Outcome: Both machines pull from the same board concurrently, knowledge accumulates into shared documents, and the GPU box earns its keep without interfering with support work.
Install the Android beta, assign work to the fleet from the phone, and let experts keep running on the office and cloud machines.
Outcome: The phone tracks progress and surfaces inbox pings when an agent needs a decision, without moving the actual compute off your hardware.
Use Cases
- Run autonomous agents that monitor and respond to email around the clock
- Distribute agent workloads across spare laptops, NAS units and GPU boxes with Tai Link
- Queue a backlog of research and reporting tasks on a Kanban board for agents to work hands-free
- Build a domain-specific AI expert with Agent Smith from a plain-language description
- Read scans, photos and PDFs at scale with the built-in OCR providers
- Generate and edit images inside an agent workflow with GPT Image 2.5
- Wire agents into your own apps through the Open API with SSE and WebSocket
- Assign work and track agent progress from your phone via the Android beta
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-10-18
Limitations
- Yao Agents is self-hosted: the engine runs on your machines, so setup, hardware and network exposure are your responsibility, though Tai Link handles cross-NAT connectivity.
- Model access and capabilities (models, search, fetch, storage) route through the Tao gateway and are billed in credits, so heavy agent activity draws down a balance rather than sitting on a flat fee.
- Android is in beta.
- Cloud server hosting is described as a trial with a Beijing node.
- Data collected from the changelog and integrations pages was thin, so release-cadence and connector details could not be fully verified from those sources.
as of 2026-10-02
Verification history
We have re-verified Yao 9 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 9 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Yao tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Open Source
$0
Ideal for
Developers, privacy-focused teams and ops groups who already own spare laptops, NAS units or GPU boxes and are willing to run the engine themselves.
What this tier adds
Starting tier — the software is free at $0, with model, search, fetch and storage usage billed separately in Tao credits.
Tao Credits
1,000 credits on signup
Cloud Service
Custom
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Yao's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Yao Agents publishes a single Open Source tier at $0 — the software is free and you bring your own hardware. The real spend sits outside the license: Tao credits for models, search, fetch and storage, plus whatever the machines cost you. That puts it well below per-seat cloud agent platforms for a team with existing spare hardware, and above them if you have to go buy a GPU box to run it.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Yao — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Solo developer, one machine: minutes to first agent — a single binary, no Node.js or Python. Adding a second computer and getting Tai Link cross-NAT working is a short session. Teams adding an idle GPU box or NAS as a separate workspace should budget an afternoon, plus time to connect model providers through Tao and settle the Tao credit balance before leaving jobs running overnight.
Switching to or from Yao
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Cloud Service accounts: Yao Agents is migrating accounts to the new Tao Service account system, which switches on the new account system — sign in through Tao after the migration completes.
- →From a single-machine agent runner: install the binary on each additional computer, add it as its own workspace, and move existing task definitions onto the shared Kanban board.
- →From Zapier or Make: re-implement the graph as agent tasks on the Kanban board rather than a static trigger-action chain, and expose results back to your apps via the Open API with SSE or WebSocket.
- →From a cloud-only agent tool like Lindy: keep the prompts, but plan the host setup yourself — Yao Agents runs the engine on your machines instead of the vendor's.
- ↗To Lindy or Zapier: export task definitions as plain-language prompts and rebuild them in the hosted tool if you decide you don't want to own hosts.
- ↗To n8n or another self-hosted workflow engine: reuse the same machines, but rebuild autonomous agent tasks as deterministic graph steps.
- ↗To a managed cloud agent service: stand down your local workspaces and accept that data now lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Yao”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Yao” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Yao.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Yao
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Yao, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Zhipu GLM
Zhipu GLM is a full-stack large-model platform with open-weights GLM-5.3 coding models, MaaS APIs and autonomous agents.
Pipedream
Pipedream is the integration layer that gives AI agents managed auth plus 10,000+ tools across 3,000+ APIs.
Hermes Desktop
Hermes Desktop is a free, open-source desktop GUI for the Hermes Agent — a self-hosted AI agent with a built-in learning loop that turns
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Yao vs Spider Cloud
Choose Yao if you need a self-hosted autonomous AI agent platform to manage tasks, run code, and orchestrate multiple agents on your own hardware – especially for privacy-sensitive or offline use. Choose Spider Cloud if your priority is high-volume, low-cost web data extraction for RAG pipelines, with 99.9% uptime and structured output. They are complementary: Yao can orchestrate agents that use Spider Cloud for web data.
Yao vs Presto Voice
If you're a developer wanting to self-host AI agents for general automation (coding, research, tasks) on your own hardware, Yao offers powerful open-source flexibility for free. If you run a QSR chain and need to automate drive-thru orders with proven ROI and upselling, Presto Voice is the specialized, enterprise-ready solution – albeit with custom pricing. The choice hinges on your domain: general-purpose agent platform vs. vertical voice AI.
Yao vs Temporal Ai
Choose Yao if you want a lightweight, self-contained AI agent runtime that runs autonomously on your own hardware (even old computers) with minimal setup. Choose Temporal if you need a battle-tested durable execution platform for orchestrating complex, fault-tolerant workflows and AI agents, especially in team environments that value recovery and human-in-the-loop.
Alternatives to Yao
View all
Zhipu GLM
Zhipu GLM is a full-stack large-model platform with open-weights GLM-5.3 coding models, MaaS APIs and autonomous agents.
Pipedream
Pipedream is the integration layer that gives AI agents managed auth plus 10,000+ tools across 3,000+ APIs.
Hermes Desktop
Hermes Desktop is a free, open-source desktop GUI for the Hermes Agent — a self-hosted AI agent with a built-in learning loop that turns
Frequently Asked Questions
Best-of guides
Used Yao? Help shape our editorial sentiment research.