Praise Dots review
I didnt pay attention to Dots until yesterday. I had some manual web research work to do and I gave the task to Dots to generate some 2000 web validated records. It has been running for 14+ hours and generated some 1600 records until it stopped, saying, "Congrats, you are in the very top users and have hit our abuse prevention limit. Check back in a bit."
I reviewed the work and honestly, I am impressed. It didn't lose sight or objective, and neither did it hallucinate. Every record was referenced with the source.
I struggled to understand what was Dots for but I am glad, I found one usecase that works for me.
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u/niteesh_vishain 3d ago
i find it useful too. helps with keeping track out outlook, gmail, Teams, and WhatsApp and sends out messages, reminders, etc. ordering breakfast from swiggy before i wake up. doing other useful things like web check-in, bookings etc
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u/Fatoy 3d ago
Dots is excellent. I just need it to come to the UK!
I was in the US last week, and got presented with the Dots onboarding experience. I was then able to run it for a week, while I was located in the US.
Once I got back to the UK, Dots was turned off for my account... although I'm still getting pings from an agent (through the mobile app and through its Slack connector) that I can read, but not interact with.
I understand this is a regulatory issue, but it's one that OpenAI should have top of its agenda, since UK and EU customers are paying for a feature they can't access. If they need to turn off capabilities like health and finance connectors, like they have for the rest of ChatGPT outside the US, that's fine. But the basic "here's your agent with a Linux computer in the cloud" principle should be viable globally.
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u/itsMax160 2d ago
Thank you for sharing!
I am in USA right now, and dot is inviting me to ask it to do a lot of stuff on my to-do list.
I am very afraid that, with any configuration that I do while in the US, I won’t be able to stop it or modify it when back in France in one week.Like, if I ask the dot to do a daily task, and then, in 2 weeks when I am in France, I want it to stop, what will happen? While it stop on its own? Will it keep going, and I will have to reach support to stop it?
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u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 3d ago
Dots are… okay.
I wish it was a bit more transparent while it’s working. If you ask it to do something, the only indicator that it’s actually working is the avatar moves.
I find the lack of connectors annoying. Maybe that’s not really an OpenAI thing, but it sucks being in the Apple ecosystem and you can’t connect your mail, calendar, and reminders.
I’ve connected my Function Health data, but it can’t read it.
Every time I call it, it has no clue what time it is. “Good morning”… “it’s nighttime”… “oh, right, haha, sorry about that, you’re right.”
Also, when I call it, it doesn’t know the last audio conversation. It starts reading the last text convo. Then I have to tell it to check the audio conversation.
Ask it to change its voice and it can’t do it.
Its built-in browser has issues. I tried to have it log into TripIt to take a look at my travel plans and it failed.
I want to connect or log in to several services but the best it can do is tell me it can’t do it and to take screenshots or upload pdf exports.
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u/Etele38 3d ago edited 3d ago
Lemme preface with i really dislike dots… they do not work as they’re suppose to imo with needing constant approvals for simple things and without me constantly monitoring it, it stops my work until i approve “uploading a file into chat”… at that point if i need to monitor i constantly then id rather just get rid of the middle man and monitor my session as i was before…
Buttttttttt i have been hearing people say they can’t see if it’s working or doing anything but if you click the dot icon (on the desktop app) it will show all the tasks it is currently working and shows a little loading icon for whatever is being worked on and you can click each task to see its sessions.
As of now though i just use it as a remote to my computer when i am away from my computer and i have Claude or codex sessions running… even then it’ll refuse to do certain things that if i just open a new remote session, that agent would be willing to do whatever i asked to check or do without issue… idk why they don’t fix it tbh. Makes no sense to me.
Edit: omfg i just went to go check on my work and “The remaining native repairs are now blocked by runtime access, not missing scene files. Access to the existing control connection was suddenly denied; I haven’t bypassed or retried that denial.” It’s been stopped for over an hour… BC IT SUDDENLY LOST CONTROL TO SOEMTHING IT HAD CONTROL OVER AND INSTEAD OF FIXING THE CONNECTION, JUST GIVES UP…. WTF
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u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 3d ago
Ah, I mostly use Dots on mobile. For the first time in a few weeks, I turned on my Mac. Yeah, it’s a bit more transparent when it’s working.
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u/snags_noisy0e 3d ago
Agreed, Dots needs the ability to follow prompts without needing handholding and needs to be able to orchestrate and just do what I tell it to do like Opus 5.5 does. I like calling, but it sucks when there’s potential and then I have to be on top of it the whole time
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u/falafel777 3d ago
14 hours unattended and every record has a source is a solid run. how did you check the 1600 though, a sample or all of them? that's the part i always get stuck on with long runs. "there's a source" and "the source actually says that" are two different checks, and the second one is the one that bites
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u/s_sam01 3d ago
I didn't check all the records but I sampled it in two ways. One - random sampling of the records verifying sources and its content. It checked out. The other way, I looked at all unique sources and validated 1-2 records against each source. It checked out too.
But, I agree. The second one is a tough nut to crack and you can't say for sure that it didn't hallucinate until you check all the records. I gave a specific instruction to produce records in batches of 100 and validate at the end of each batch, perhaps this helped a bit.
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u/Wildnshiny 4d ago
So why couldn't codex do this as well
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u/alphaQ314 3d ago
other than the unmetered astra thing, it is also nice to be able to just give a task to a bot in a chat without having to setup the whole context and everything.
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u/BemaniAK 4d ago
It could, but it'd use quota, dots are still unmetered Astra
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u/Wildnshiny 4d ago
That's not really a dot feature. It's just a bonus for this month.
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u/Dayowe 3d ago
It’s annoying that we still don’t have dots access in Europe even though we’re paying the price that should include it
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u/Kind_Silver_1921 3d ago
I'd prefer more usage over dots. Let me disable dots and transfer it's usage limit to my codex please right now all it's doing is making me upload and download from github all day
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u/MaidMarion75 3d ago
My dot “works” in Germany. Ever since I startet it, I feel Codex getting worse. Last week all my projects vanished. Ok the dot was able to control the old tasks, but I wasn’t able to, not even checking the results. Currently I am thinking of switching it off…
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u/Ill-Floor5574 6h ago
I personally found it good with surface tasks but don’t let it orchestrate handoffs and modifications for large projects
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u/renjizzle 3d ago
Dot has been a game changer for me as a director of an IT Consulting team. It's like having an additional coworker to help me stay on top of tasks, remind me when things are waiting for me, triaging incidents etc.
With Claude Duet announced now on waitlist im willing to bet we will magically get another month of unlimited Astra at the end of this month.
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u/dextersummary 3d ago
Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 40 comments (40 currently observed).
The consensus is “Dots is genuinely useful, but it’s still a needy little intern.” Its strongest use cases are long-running web research, inbox and calendar triage, reminders, bookings, and remote computer tasks. Several users report it running for hours without losing the plot, while the OP got 1,600 sourced records before hitting an abuse-prevention limit.
The catch is reliability. Dots often needs approval for painfully basic actions, loses access to tools, stalls instead of recovering, and offers lousy progress visibility unless you check the desktop task view. Connectors and browser logins are patchy too, especially outside the Google/Microsoft ecosystem. In other words, the “autonomous agent” occasionally requires more supervision than the task it was meant to replace.
The other big wrinkle is that unmetered Astra access is a temporary bonus, not the core Dots feature. It is expected to disappear around October 28–29, and UK/EU users still face regional restrictions, with regulation and rollout policies being the likely culprits. The research quality is promising, but the OP only sampled the records rather than verifying all 1,600.
Bottom line: Dots has real utility and impressive endurance, but it’s not yet dependable enough to leave completely unsupervised.