Manus
Also known as: Manus AI, Butterfly Effect agent, general-purpose AI agent
Manus launched in invitation-only beta in March 2025 and went viral almost immediately. Built by Butterfly Effect, a Singapore-based startup, it became one of the most-watched agent products of 2025 and continued scaling into 2026 after Meta invested and began integrating it across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The name comes from the MIT motto, meaning 'mind and hand.'
What distinguishes Manus from chat-style AI tools is execution scope. When you give it a goal, it does not return a text response. It opens a dedicated cloud Ubuntu virtual machine, browses websites, writes and executes code, creates and downloads files, and delivers a finished artifact. A market research task might return a structured Word document with cited data. A travel planning request might produce a downloadable itinerary with prices. You can watch it work in real time through a live computer view, or close the tab and come back when it is done.
Manus also introduced Wide Research, a multi-agent feature where every subagent is a full Manus instance rather than a role-specialized worker. The product has a plugin system called Agent Skills (markdown files that define reusable workflows), and it routes tasks through a combination of models including Claude and Qwen depending on what each step needs. The company rebuilt their agent framework four times while figuring out how to manage context at scale without degrading model quality mid-task.