Almanac launched on Hacker News under the title "Launch HN: Almanac (YC S26) – AI that knows your company." It's an agent that lives on its own computer, connects to your work tools, and keeps a running wiki of what's happening across your company. I read the launch thread in full. I also went through Almanac's site and pricing page and checked the founders' claims against the YC company profile before writing any of this.
Short answer: Almanac is a YC S26 startup building an AI agent you message over Slack, iMessage, or text. It connects to Gmail, Calendar, Docs, GitHub, and other tools to compile a shared company wiki, then uses that context to complete tasks on its own. Plans run $30–$200 per user per month with a 7-day free trial; Enterprise pricing is custom.
In my testing of what's actually available this week — the public site, the pricing page, and the live signup flow — Almanac is further along than a typical week-old launch. But it also asks for more trust than most tools. It wants OAuth access to your Gmail, GitHub, and calendar, plus a browser that can act on your behalf when a service has no API. I didn't connect my own company accounts to it for this piece, and I'll explain why below. Here's what Almanac actually does, what it costs, and what HN's commenters pushed back on.
What you'll need
Almanac is built for teams, not solo hobbyists. The pricing and feature set — shared wikis, teammate visibility, Slack channels — assume more than one person is using it. You'll need admin-level comfort connecting Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, GitHub, and Slack. The wiki is only as useful as what it can read, so people also connect Chrome, Granola, PostHog, or Attio. You'll want a phone number or Slack workspace handy too, since the whole interface is texting it tasks over iMessage or Slack, not a dashboard. Before connecting anything, decide what you're comfortable letting an agent do unsupervised. Almanac says it will stop and ping you at logins, payments, or decisions it shouldn't make alone. Everything short of that line is fair game once you've granted access.
Step-by-step: what happens when you sign up
1. Start at usealmanac.com and hit "Get started for free"
That button routes straight into an OAuth account-creation flow (through WorkOS's AuthKit) rather than a product tour or demo video. There's no sandboxed preview before you're asked to create an account.
2. Connect the tools you want in the wiki
Per the site and the founders' own description in the HN thread, connections are one-click OAuth for services like Gmail and PostHog. For tools without a clean API, Almanac uses what it calls "a real browser" — signed into your accounts, with its own persistent logins.
3. Let Almanac compile your wiki
Almanac reads Gmail, Calendar, Docs, GitHub, Granola notes, and your other connected tools, and compiles them into a wiki it references before every task. In the HN thread, the founders confirmed this wiki refreshes once a day, not continuously — worth knowing if you revoke access and expect the change to take effect immediately.
4. Text it a task over Slack or iMessage
There's no workflow builder — you message Almanac the way you'd message a coworker, and it texts back when a task is done or when it hits a decision point it's been told to defer to you.
5. Watch for the handoff points
When a task needs a login, a payment, or a judgment call, Almanac either pings you or hands over a live view of the browser it's using, so you can finish the step yourself.
Example prompts you can copy
These follow the categories of tasks Almanac's own launch materials describe, adapted into requests you could actually send once it's connected:
- "Pull the last week of customer complaints from our #support Slack channel and file GitHub issues for anything that looks like a real bug."
- "Look at what's on my calendar tomorrow and send me a one-paragraph brief for each meeting based on the emails and docs tied to it."
- "Check our subscription and SaaS charges from the last billing cycle and flag anything that renewed that we said we'd cancel."
- "Monitor the staging deploy log overnight and fix anything that looks like a trivial, low-risk break — otherwise just report it."
Common mistakes to avoid
The biggest mistake I'd flag: don't let "AI that knows your company" stop you from reading what it's actually allowed to touch. Almanac's default model is closer to binary than granular. An item lives in your personal wiki or the shared company one. Multiple HN commenters pointed out that doesn't map cleanly onto a company with any real hierarchy, and the founders agreed this was a gap — granular permissions are on the roadmap, not shipped. Second, don't assume the wiki is live. It's a once-a-day refresh, so a revoked connection or a corrected fact won't propagate instantly. Third, don't underestimate the 2FA and terms-of-service exposure that comes with browser-based access to tools without a real API. The founders acknowledged in the thread that this carries ToS risk, and that two-factor prompts still need a human to clear them. Fourth, don't judge the 7-day trial the way you'd judge a demo. A commenter raised this exact point: a week is a tight window for a tool whose whole pitch is that it gets smarter as its wiki accumulates history. Fifth, don't assume Almanac replaces Notion, Linear, or Slack. The company is explicit that it doesn't — it's meant to sit on top of tools you already use.
What Almanac costs
Almanac's pricing, confirmed on its pricing page as of September 1, 2026, is per-seat with no published discount for annual billing:
| Plan | Price | What scales | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $30/user/month | Standard model usage, standard browser minutes | Small teams trying the core wiki + agent loop |
| Pro | $100/user/month | 5x model usage, 2x browser minutes | Teams running Almanac on real day-to-day tasks |
| Scale | $200/user/month | 20x model usage, 4x browser minutes | Heavier automated workloads across a team |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom usage, plus SSO and access controls | Larger orgs needing rollout support |
Every plan includes unlimited connected accounts, a shared company wiki, and access over Slack and iMessage — the tiers scale how much the agent can actually do (model usage and browser time), not which features you unlock. All plans start with a 7-day free trial, and per the pricing page, "invitations are free until accepted," so adding teammates to evaluate it doesn't burn a paid seat until they sign in.
The Hacker News launch: what people are actually debating
The founders — Rohan Sharma, Kushagra Chitkara, and Divit Sheth, who've worked together since preparing for India's JEE engineering entrance exam over a decade ago — pitched Almanac as the product of more than a year spent on wiki-style memory systems, including earlier work for Harvard and NASA, per their YC company profile. Their argument is that most AI agents treat memory as an afterthought, while Almanac invests the compute upfront to compile a company wiki before it ever attempts a task.
That framing didn't land unopposed. One commenter listed more than 30 competing products, including Mem0, Khoj, and Dashworks. They pushed the founders to explain what the wiki layer actually buys you over "a plain markdown repo plus Claude." The founders answered that the wiki enables proactive agents and long-horizon tasks. At least one reader found that underspecified without concrete, measurable examples. Separately, the founders said they're currently running on a model they called "GPT-5.6-terra" in the thread. Treat that as a founder claim, not something Almanac's site independently confirms — multi-model support is still roadmap, not shipped.
The more practical pushback was about trust. Browser-based access to services without a real API puts Almanac in a gray area on some tools' terms of service, and the founders didn't dispute that. They also confirmed team members can't see each other's personal account connections, only the shared company wiki. That's a reasonable line, but check it against your own team's compliance requirements before you connect anything sensitive.
Tools that make this easier
If you want a company knowledge base that doesn't require handing an agent OAuth access to your inbox first, how to use Notion AI covers a lower-trust way to get AI-assisted answers over docs your team already writes. For agents that complete multi-step tasks with a narrower, more contained blast radius, how to use ChatGPT Agent Mode and how to use ChatGPT Agents are worth trying first, since both run inside a sandbox you can watch rather than a persistent computer with standing logins. For how I actually vet claims like the ones in this piece before publishing, see how we test AI tools, and check our AI tool ratings if you want to compare this category against others. If you're setting up an AI toolkit for the first time and aren't ready for something this deep into your accounts, kit for AI is a gentler starting point.
My take
Almanac's pitch is more coherent than most week-old launches. The founders have a real, multi-year technical thread — wiki-first memory — instead of a wrapper around someone else's agent framework. They were also unusually candid on HN about what's missing: granular permissions, multi-model support, real-time wiki updates. That candor is worth something. What holds me back from recommending it yet is the trust curve. This is a brand-new product asking for OAuth into your email, calendar, and code, plus a browser with your logins, on a binary permission model, evaluated over a 7-day trial. I didn't connect my own accounts to write this review. I'd tell most teams to wait for a few months of public track record, or start with one low-stakes connection like GitHub issue triage, before pointing Almanac at anything with customer data or payment access.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Almanac free?
No, but every plan starts with a 7-day free trial and invitations to teammates are free until they accept, so you can evaluate it as a team before paying. Paid plans start at $30 per user per month.
How long does it take to start using Almanac?
Signup itself takes minutes — the "Get started for free" button goes straight into an OAuth flow. The slower part is deciding which tools to connect and reviewing what access each one grants before you do it.
What is the easiest way to try Almanac well?
Start with one low-risk connection, like GitHub or Slack, rather than your full account set on day one. Use the 7-day trial to test one real recurring task — like meeting briefs or subscription monitoring — rather than a broad, unscoped "manage everything" request.
What does Almanac connect to?
Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Chrome, GitHub, Granola, PostHog, and Attio via one-click OAuth, plus a general browser-based mode for tools without a direct integration, per Almanac's site and the founders' HN comments.
Is Almanac a good fit if my team has hierarchical permission needs?
Not yet. The current model is a binary personal-vs-company wiki, which multiple Hacker News commenters flagged as too coarse for larger or more structured teams. The founders confirmed granular permissions are on the roadmap but not shipped.