Meta introduced Muse on September 8, 2026, a personal agent that is supposed to do work, not only answer questions. It is rolling out in the United States on iOS, Android, and muse.ai, with AI glasses promised later. People can message it in a dedicated app or in WhatsApp. Meta said it is free for most uses, with subscriptions for people who want more. The model underneath is Muse Spark, which the company calls its most capable system for agentic work.

Muse runs on Muse Secure VM, a dedicated virtual machine that holds the agent and the person’s data and has its own browser. Meta said the agent can send email, book travel, fill forms, negotiate, and keep working after the app is closed, coming back when it needs approval for a send or a purchase. Checkout uses Link built by Stripe, with one-time cards and purchase protections. Shop Pay and 1Password support are listed as coming soon. Meta published a companion research note on Muse security and safety.

The privacy design is the other half of the pitch. A separate Sentinel agent, isolated at the system level, has to approve anything that reaches the internet. Muse is not supposed to see passwords or payment methods. People pick which apps connect and how much access each one gets, can tell Muse to forget details, and can opt out of training. Conversations and VM data are not shared with Meta’s ad systems, the company said. Later this year it plans Muse Confidential VM, encrypted with a key only the user holds.

Decoded Take

Meta is trying to make a consumer agent feel as ordinary as a WhatsApp thread, which is the distribution advantage no coding-agent startup has. The Secure VM and Sentinel language is there because the product is useless unless it can touch mail, payments, and logins, and dangerous the moment it can. The tell is not the Halloween-costume demo. It is whether U.S. users let Muse send mail and spend money in the first month without a pile of reversal tickets, and whether Confidential VM ships as a default or a footnote. Watch App Store availability outside the launch countries, the paid-tier price, and any safety incident that forces Meta to pull a connector.