📖 The AI Tool Bible

Vellum

✓ Editorially verified

Personal AI assistant with persistent memory across email, calendar, and chat channels.

Freemium· Free tier + API costs; paid plans availableAgentsMulti-model (Claude-class LLMs)8.2 / 10
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Best for

Pick Vellum if you want a memory-aware personal assistant that lives in your existing inbox, calendar, and chat tools rather than a separate chat window.

Skip if

Skip it if you're looking for a developer platform to build and evaluate LLM applications, or if you can't grant an assistant broad OAuth scopes.

Vellum is a personal AI assistant aimed at professionals who want to offload routine admin work: email triage, calendar wrangling, meeting prep, research, and travel booking. It runs across Mac, Web, iOS, Slack, Telegram, phone, and CLI, and is positioned around a layered memory system (episodic, semantic, procedural, emotional, prospective, behavioral, narrative, shared) that lets the assistant accumulate context about your preferences and working style instead of restarting each session.

The pitch is essentially "ChatGPT with memory, OAuth, and channels" — a managed cloud service with sub-30-second setup, managed OAuth into Gmail/Google Calendar/Slack, and the option to self-host. There's a free tier plus paid plans, and the project is open-source so technically inclined users can run it themselves. It's built on top of frontier LLMs (Claude-class models) rather than a proprietary one.

Closest comparisons are Hermes, OpenClaw, and Claude Cowork. Vellum's edge is the bundled hosting plus OAuth glue, which makes it usable by non-developers; the trade-off is that you're trusting a young product with broad access to your inbox and calendar.

Editor's take

Vellum is making a credible bet that the next useful AI assistant is one that actually remembers you and reaches into your existing tools. The eight-memory taxonomy is more marketing than architecture, but the OAuth-plus-channels package is genuinely useful. Treat it like an early-stage product and audit the integrations you grant.

— The AI Tool Bible editorial team

Pros

  • Persistent multi-type memory across sessions
  • Works across Mac, Web, iOS, Slack, Telegram, phone, CLI
  • Managed OAuth into Gmail, Calendar, Slack
  • Open-source with self-host option
  • Fast onboarding (sub-30-second setup)

Cons

  • ⚠️ Requires broad access to inbox and calendar
  • ⚠️ Pricing tiers not publicly itemized
  • ⚠️ Young product in a crowded assistant space
  • ⚠️ Relies on third-party LLM costs on top of plan

Use cases

personal assistantemail triagecalendar managementmeeting prepresearchtask automation

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