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Exploring Z AI: A New Free Open-Source Alternative to Cowork for Local AI Automation
In this episode, we test out Z AI, a free and open-source alternative to the paid tool Cowork. The video showcases the capabilities of Z AI, which uses GLM 4.7 to automate various tasks locally on your desktop. From organizing files and managing customer service tickets to posting on social media and performing market research, Z AI aims to offer a powerful toolset without the cost. The video provides a side-by-side comparison with Claude Cowork, highlighting the pros and cons of both platforms. Additionally, viewers are introduced to the AI Success Lab and AI Profit Boardroom, communities that offer further resources and support for mastering AI automation.
00:00 Introduction to Free AI Agent Alternative
00:49 Downloading and Setting Up the AI Agent
01:38 Testing the AI Agent's Capabilities
03:05 Comparing AI Agent with Claude Cowork
06:24 Advanced Features and Customization
10:20 Community and Support Resources
12:27 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Today we're going to be testing out a new free alternative that's open source to co-work right and this is using something called Z AI. So we're going to start testing this out. As you can see right here, we're going to start running it. Actually runs with GLM and essentially if you've never used co-work before. It's a really powerful way to use an AI agent locally and to build whatever you want. It can control your browser. It can, for example, build out coding projects. It can link to stuff like anti-gravity. It can for example create spreadsheets, reports, research, etc. locally. So that's called co-work. The problem is that it's a paid tool, right? Whereas you can use for example something like this and we're going to test out today to see if it actually works and run this locally and we should be able to use it I think for free, right? Or it's got different tiers anyway. So you've got a free plan right here with 200 credits per day that
refreshes, right? So let's try this out. We're going to download this for Mac like you can see. And it seems pretty simple. Of course, you don't need to use terminal commands or anything like that to get this started, which is great. And if you're wondering, okay, like what's the point of agent, which is what we're using today. These AI agents work on your desktop, so they can automate things locally. And you could have a developer agent, browser agent, you could use a document agent, and you can operate it in plain text in just English, which is great. You could organize your desktop files, you could manage tickets for customer service. You could, for example, create market research or add PDF signatures. You could even build, for example, tools or even tweet directly to social media using these tools. So, it is pretty much endless in terms of what you can do cuz it can control your whole laptop for you. And also, you don't need to be technical to set this up. We just download a file and then we're good to
go on this. So, we're going to test this out and see how it performs today. You can see an example of it actually working here. So, it can, for example, organize your desktop and you just give it commands inside the chat and then it goes off and does this. Also, you can see that it's separated by different agents. So, you got developer agent, blah, blah. And from there, you're good to go. Also, what I really like about this is that it's using GLM 4. 7, and that's a model I've been very impressed with by so far. If you've never used GLM 4. 7, you can get this free version of it at chat. z. ai. And this can go off and build all sorts of projects for you, right? So, for example, here you can see we've built out websites. We've done keyword research. We've created blog posts with this. We've created full animated dashboards like you can see. So the agent itself and the API that it's using is very powerful. Back in a sec. All right. So that's downloaded now. Let's try it out. So we're just going to click on this to install it. Nice and easy. And then we should be able to open this up. Here we go. Reformation glass says, "Do you have any videos on how to set up NAM from scratch? " Yeah, you can find that on YouTube directly. One sec. And there we go. Just a quick note here. The first time I installed this, it didn't work just a minute ago. It seems to work now. Just something to be aware of. If it doesn't work, delete it, reinstall it. That should fix it. Now, we're just going to open this up. And here we go. So, we just need to accept the terms and conditions. And then we've got like a camb board for different AI agents. Let's pull this up. What we got here? We got multimodal, browser agent, etc. So, let's just try something simple now. I'm going to say, okay, please help me organize my desktop. All right. So, just
to put this into context. Co-work is a paid tool. This is a free one and it seems to have worked much better than other stuff that I've used previously. Plus, if it's using GLM, then usually GLM is like a really great way to code. All right, so from here we're going to say, okay, help me organize my desktop and we'll just take a few screenshots just to fill up the desktop with loads of stuff, make it really messy as much as we can. There we go. All right. And then we're going to say, please help me organize my desktop. And now you can see it's actually assigning the task to different agents depending on what you need to do. So they've got this task splitting feature. If you want to see how this compares side by side with Claude called coowork whilst it's working. Let me show you how this works. So this is Claude called coowork. This is agent. And if we type in new task, plug this in, select a folder like downloads. Hit let's go using pretty much the same prompt. You can see how they both look. I still think I prefer the UI of Claude Co, but it's pretty cool. And then you can see here if we zoom in on agent, it's got the agent running. And then you can select which one you want to do, I think. So you can copy that X. And then you can see now it's added these tasks to the cam board. Right now I have to allow this to be able to access different things inside a computer. So I'm just going to do that. And then I think it can actually record your screen, but I'd have to reset it and stop the task that's existing. So I'm not going to do that right now, but I'll do that later. And you can see this is working its magic. And then it gives you the outputs right here. Reformation says, "I'm consistently amazed by how well you know how to operate, work, all of the new stuff that comes out. Thanks for all that you do. It's a pleasure, mate. Absolutely happy to help. So, I appreciate you watching. Thank you. " So, it's listed out these tasks. We're going to click on start task now. And it'll just go off and start doing this. And then you can see once the task is completed, it will mark it as green as you can see. Being 100% honest, I don't think it's as smooth as using something like Claude Co-work, which just has a nicer It makes everything a bit easier. It gives you a few options as you're going along and it's just easier to even just to read on the page. It looks easier and nicer than using something like agent. But agent is free. So, you know, it's down to you whichever one you prefer. I feel like for just organizing a desktop, maybe agent is has over complicated it a bit. And you can see they're working at the same time here. So, this is Claude working on the downloads folder. Um, this is agent organizing the desktop folder. But what I will say is the desktop is looking a lot more clean now, right? And it's created the screenshots folder right here as well. But yeah, basically the desktop has been organized. You can see the tasks that have been completed. It's done five out of six tasks or it's done all six now as you can see. And what it's actually done is created this desktop move plan CSV to capture the screenshots and analyze the images just to make sure it's done properly. So if we click on that, you can see that's been done now. and it's organized itself between a developer agent, document agent, multimodial agent, and then you've got the notes on the right hand side of what's been done. Right now, once that's actually finished and completed, to be fair, Claude and agent both finished at the same time, right, in terms of tasks, and then it gives you a breakdown of like overall what was done, what was organized, etc. And then you've got this MD file that actually shows you everything that was been done. And also, you can share this, I think. So, you can actually share this as a link. So if we actually go on to Chrome, we can share the link and inside the settings as well, you can change this between like transparent or light. You can change the proy. You can also change
that you use, right? So you could, for example that you get free access to that. One thing I will say is you do have a limited number of credits. But what you can also do here is you can plug in your own custom model inside the settings of agent. Right? So if you have a look, you can use your own custom API and then you could for example use it on Gemini or OpenAI or Anthropic or even Open Router, right? You could grab a free API from Open Routter and plug that in. Same with Quinn as well. Then you got Miniax, ZAI, pretty much everything you can think of. And the other really cool thing here is you can actually use local models for this, right? So you could use O Lama which is a free API host it like so select whichever model you want to use and the great thing about that is then you're not limited by the tokens right because you can use the API inside the local model section select that as your model and then use it as much as you want you can also see the browser management and the cookies here you can add MC so you can see already that we have MCPs plugged in for X for WhatsApp LinkedIn Reddit GitHub and Slack in fact these are coming soon so just be aware that these MCPS are coming they're not installed already. But then you do have like for example Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, Notion, and Lark as the ideas here. You can also change your default search engine as well inside the settings here. And then inside the projects, you've got the previous operations you ran, right? And you can see how many tokens I used up as well. So let's try something else now. I'm going to say, okay, research the latest AI news, then go to x. com and post a tweet about the latest AI news in short bullet point format, making it fun plus interesting. Let's see if it can operate that. So, we're going to hit go right now. The one thing that I would say is I don't know if it's going to use your existing Chrome or like a Chromium cuz if it uses Chromium, then it's not going to be logged into X and it won't be able to work. So, we'd have to log in separately and that'd be super annoying. But, let's see what it does. Overall though, I mean it does seem like a worthy competitor of coowork, especially because of the free element and also it's open source. We can do the same thing inside claude as well. Claude co-work just to test them out side by side and we'll see which one performs the best. So it breaks the task down into what it's going to do. Here's the tasks etc. As you can see once you type in the prompt it will give you the tasks and then you need to click on start task at the bottom once that's done. So we'll compare them side by side. Claw co-work over here versus AI agent. So far, it seems like co-work is going to do this a lot faster. But let's see. Here we So, it's gone to x. com. You can either look inside the Chrome browser and see what's going on, or you can just have a look inside here and see what it's doing as well. When you're using Claude Co., it's also writing the post as you can see here. So, this is Claude Co that's actually doing its magic. Whereas AI agent, I think, is still stuck in the research phase. You can see it just browsing the internet right here. And then Claude Co actually asked for permission before publishing the post. I'm going to say okay, yes. Another limitation of agent as well as you can see is like it's using the actual browser to research when really what it should be doing is just searching the internet using like a web search right it doesn't need to actually physically go on the pages to research the web like you can see with claude coowork it moved a lot faster because it's not using a browser agent it's just searching inside the chat finding information and then posting the tweet like you can see here right if we say okay what's the link to the tweet inside coowork it's now grabbed the link as you can see and we've got the link here So claw coworker was a lot faster with AI agent. It's okay. It's doing the task, but it's taking a lot longer. And also one of the biggest issues here is it's actually asking for my login credentials, which I don't want to type inside the chat. give that away to the agent, right? So that's annoying as well. I could type inside here, just log in manually. However, overall, I would say a agent is decent considering you can use it for free. Bear in mind, it's free and open source. You can build custom multi- aent workflows. It runs locally. It automates browser terminal files and everything and it can automate a lot of tasks right
here. So if you want to get the setup instructions, all the resources from today, you get that inside the AI success lab along with a 30-day plan for really mastering agent automation. And then also what I've included inside here is a list of 100 prompts that you can use and test inside agent as well. I do think is a free option. It's pretty decent. And then if you want to get the notes from today, it's all inside the AI success lab which connects you with 46,500 people as you can see. And also inside the classroom here, if you just go to this section, you can find the video notes from today. If you want to get help and support and really grow and scale with AI automation, join the AI profit boardroom link in the description. This is an amazing community that helps you automate your business and save time with AI. It's based on all of my playbooks that work for me. You can see inside the community here is very active and you can post any questions you have and get help and support whenever you need it pretty much 24/7 because there's 2,100 members in here. So, there's always people online. Like it's a big community of people just helping each other, right? And you can see everyone just winning and learning and growing together. Like you can see also inside here we have an accountability group. So you can post questions, post your goals for the day, help you avoid overwhelm, help you avoid information overload, etc. Cuz you just post your goals like you can see Kevin's done right here and then just stay 100% focused on what you need to achieve today, right? And that's the best mindset I think as well. Also, you can jump on live coaching calls. If you ever get stuck with anything, you need live technical support, you can do that on the coaching calls. Inside the classroom here, we have a six week AI automation road map that takes you from complete beginner to expert with AI automation. Plus, you learn how to build your first AI agent in under 5 minutes. As well as that, you'll get all of our best playbooks for automating avatar videos, shorts, newsletters, Twitter automations, etc. You'll learn how to get clients inside our agency course based on what's working for me. You can watch back the coaching call recordings if you ever don't get time to turn up on live ones. And also you'll learn our best for automations for SEO, so ranking inside Google and also AI search engines as well as a six week road map to grow a YouTube channel based on what's working for me. So that's all inside the AI profit boardroom. Feel free to get it. Link in the comments description or just go to aiprofitboardroom. com.