Feb 2026 - Autonomous Assistants
Today I’m releasing the February TrustIndex / Report: Autonomous Assistants.
You don’t need another feed of AI updates. You need something that can tell you whether the ground is tilting - and by how much.
Because the real shift isn’t “better answers”. It’s the move from systems that tell you things to systems that do things. An interface layer that sits between you and the world (browsing, deciding, acting) and (increasingly) doing it without asking for permission every step of the way.
The slope shows up first as convenience. Then it becomes default. And by the time it’s obvious, you’re no longer using tools.
You’re delegating to them.
Each TrustIndex / Report is my attempt to track that slope - not the hype cycle, not the launch theatre. Each one is an instrument panel plus a signal map - what moved, why it matters, and where the incentives are pushing next. Autonomy. Reality (mediation). Fidelity. Transparency. Portability. Equality.
The theme for this report is Autonomous Assistants.
Not “agents” as a vibe. Not chatbots with a longer leash. But assistants that can take an intent and turn it into action across real surfaces - the web, your desktop, your inbox, your calendar, your files, your money, your life!
And that’s where the trust problem becomes concrete.
Trust stops being a feeling and becomes a set of affordances:
Can you see what it did?
Can you interrupt it?
Can you roll it back?
Can you revoke access cleanly?
Can you prove who (or what) acted?
If those control surfaces exist, delegation scales. If they don’t, autonomy doesn’t “arrive” - it just leaks risk into everything around it.
This report covers:
why Autonomous Assistants are the next thickening of the interface layer (and why that matters more than any single model jump)
the signals that moved this month (and what they imply beyond the demos)
the TrustIndex dials - what’s climbing, what’s lagging, and where pressure is building
the second-order impacts - utility, culture, economics, attention, and the trust layer that has to carry it all
If you’ve been feeling that subtle tilt as the slope shifts under your feet, my hope is this will help you make it legible - in a pragmatic and useful way.
Download the PDF version of the report here:
Or read the HTML version here:
https://medium.com/@robman/feb-2026-autonomous-assistants-cfede38837db
And if you want to keep tracking the slope with me - you can always find the current dashboard at TrustIndex.today and subscribe for regular updates as new Signals arrive, weekly Briefings land, and new Reports are released.