NYC startup founder Dossey Richards unveils autonomous AI agent capable of executing complex tasks from emailing world leaders to deploying websites—all without human intervention
At a Crypto Monday event in Manhattan, attendees watched as an AI agent called “Alfred” independently searched for, found, and emailed the Office of the President of Mexico while its creator, Dossey Richards, waited alongside them for the results.
“I’ll ask it to find the email of the office of the President of Mexico, and then I want it to cc me in an emailed introduction to them,” Richards said to the crowd, before typing the request into Alfred’s chat interface. Within moments, Richards received a notification on his phone. “I just got an email just now,” he confirmed, displaying the message Alfred had sent, unprompted, to a Mexican government official.
The demonstration served as the official unveiling of what Richards describes as “America’s first AI agent capable of doing real work”—a technology designed to execute tasks in the real world rather than simply respond to queries. The NYC-based startup, with Bushwick origins, used the event to emerge from stealth mode and announce public availability of their product.
BEYOND CHATBOTS: “ALFRED DOESN’T JUST TALK—IT DOES”
“Alfred is not like ChatGPT. It’s not just a conversational chat bot. It’s not something that is going to give you some interesting information about a topic,” Richards explained. “You give it a task and it actually does what it can to accomplish it in the real world.”
Unlike conventional AI systems that merely generate content or provide information, Alfred operates autonomously across multiple domains. The system doesn’t just answer questions—it takes action, bridging the gap between AI capabilities and real-world task completion that has limited most AI assistants until now.
WHAT ALFRED CAN DO: FROM RESEARCH TO DEPLOYMENT
According to the platform’s welcome screen, Alfred can execute complex, multi-step tasks across three primary capability areas. Users can interact with Alfred through voice commands, receiving spoken responses to their queries. Its core functionality, however, is “AI-Powered Task Execution,” where Alfred “doesn’t just generate content—it completes tasks, automates workflows, writes and executes code, and delivers real-world results.”
The system’s capabilities extend to “Web, Data & System Automation,” allowing it to “research insights, generate reports, analyze trends, and even execute commands in a terminal.” These features enable users to request tasks such as:
“Research the top 10 fastest-growing startups in AI, summarize their key innovations, draft a report, and email it to my team.”
“Analyze the latest sales data from my company’s API, generate insights in a Google Sheet, and prepare a Google Slides presentation summarizing key performance metrics.”
“Spin up a new web server, deploy a simple React landing page for my startup, and send me the live URL.”
To further demonstrate Alfred’s capabilities during the Crypto Monday event, Richards asked the system to “find the top performers on the New York Stock Exchange today and put their gains into a spreadsheet and then publish that spreadsheet to Google Sheets.” The system proceeded to create a document listing Nvidia, Tesla, and Advanced Micro Devices as top performers.
Richards explicitly positioned Alfred as direct competition to a similar Chinese AI agent called “Manus” that launched several weeks ago. According to the founder, both tools represent a significant leap beyond the chat interface paradigm that has dominated consumer AI to date.
“If you said, for example, to [other AI tools], ‘I want you to email the president of Mexico,’ they may give you some information where to find that info, and they may tell you how to send an email,” Richards explained. “That gap is not something that is one line of code. That is many, many different things that happen between that and the finish line.”
Richards recounted a particularly striking example of Alfred’s initiative: “One time I asked him to get me the emails for a group of people that I thought would be really good to email for some consulting that I wanted to do in the startup space, and he couldn’t find a bunch of emails that he thought was best. He then, on his own, emailed Techstars and asked them for the emails.”
When audience members raised questions about potential risks, including misuse and privacy concerns, Richards acknowledged seeing “troubling sparks” during development. “I definitely could see malevolent state actors in the future to be able to do things that, even with very little money, would otherwise take a person or a team of people a very short period of time.”
The name “Alfred” appears to be a deliberate nod to Batman’s butler, though Richards deflected direct questions about the reference. “I wouldn’t be able to answer that due to copyright,” he said with a smile, before adding, “His last name is a nickel’s worth,” an apparent reference to Alfred Pennyworth, Batman’s loyal butler.
PRICING: FROM FREE TASKS TO “LORD” AND “VICEROY” TIERS
Alfred’s competition extends beyond Manus to include major AI research labs. According to the press release, rumors suggest OpenAI had plans to release a similar tool focused on “PHD level research” at a price point of $20,000, while Alfred and Manus are offering their technology at a fraction of that cost.
As of this publication, Alfred is currently available in beta at https://myalfred.online, with users permitted ten free tasks daily. Richards hasn’t specified how long the beta will remain open, suggesting that interested users should secure access while it’s still available. Unlike Manus, which quickly accumulated a waitlist reportedly exceeding 2 million users, Alfred is currently accessible without such restrictions—though this could change as user numbers grow.
For those needing more extensive capabilities, the platform offers two premium tiers. The “Lord Tier” costs $199 per month, providing 300 tasks and 1,000 actions monthly. For power users, the “Viceroy Tier” is available at $349 monthly, offering 700 tasks and 3,000 actions. These pricing options position Alfred as significantly more accessible than OpenAI’s rumored $20,000 service while providing an immediate alternative to Manus’s waitlist approach.
The system is integrated with Google Suite applications, allowing it to create and share documents, sheets, and slides without requiring additional setup from users.
“MADE IN THE USA”: THE GEOPOLITICS OF AI AGENTS
David Fung, who organized the Crypto Monday event, framed the development in terms of international AI competition. “This is the future people doing technology, doing stuff for you. Real stuff. This is made in the USA,” Fung told the audience, positioning Alfred in contrast to its Chinese counterpart, Manus.
When asked about the technical infrastructure behind Alfred, Richards was selective with details. He mentioned using DeepSeek and “For-OH” (possibly Forefront or another AI provider), noting that “the models themselves are actually a very small part of it.”
As the presentation concluded, a participant called Alfred “a useful tool” for completing tasks that “will take a work assignment that normally takes 2-4 hours to complete and have it finished in 30 seconds to a minute.” Whether Alfred will deliver on its ambitious promises at scale remains to be seen as users begin testing the system’s capabilities beyond the controlled demonstration environment.
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