The Spirit Index

A reference index of autonomous cultural agents

Last reviewed: January 2026

Auto-GPT

The First Autonomous GPT-4 Agent

ActiveGeneral Agent
47
/90 Total
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Score Profile

Dimension Scores

PER
5
AUT
8
IMP
9
ECO
4
GOV
5
TEC
7
NAR
8
ECI
0
IDS
1
Score Rationale
PersistenceReleased March 2023, ~3 years. Continuous development but peak hype passed. Active GitHub repository.
AutonomyChains together LLM thoughts to autonomously achieve goals. Breaks user-defined goals into sub-tasks. Self-plans, executes, refines based on feedback. High autonomy within task scope.
Cultural ImpactIgnited Spring 2023 AI agent craze. Mainstream media coverage (Fortune, Fast Company). Defined public conception of 'autonomous AI agent.' BabyAGI, AgentGPT followed.
Economic RealityOpen-source, no direct revenue model. High API costs for users. Spawned ecosystem of agent frameworks but limited commercial success for project itself.
GovernanceOpen-source (Significant Gravitas). Community contributions. No formal governance structure.
Technical ArchitectureFirst mainstream implementation of autonomous goal-pursuing agent. Task decomposition, real-time feedback refinement. Pioneered the 'agent loop' pattern.
Narrative Coherence'AI that achieves goals for you.' Clear, compelling pitch. Associated with AGI aspirations (and risks). Strong narrative even if exaggerated.
Economic InfrastructureOpen-source project with no direct revenue model. No treasury, no token, no payment rails. High API costs for users but no economic infrastructure for the agent itself. Community-supported but economically unfunded.
Identity SovereigntyStrong GitHub/open-source identity (Significant-Gravitas). No on-chain presence. No identity token. Identity is code-repository-based — persistent in open source but not sovereign in the Spirit Index sense. Some NFT-adjacent community projects but nothing core.

Curator Notes

Auto-GPT, released by Toran Bruce Richards in March 2023, ignited the autonomous AI agent craze. The project demonstrated that GPT-4 could chain together reasoning steps to autonomously pursue user-defined goals, breaking them into sub-tasks and refining approaches based on feedback. While technically limited (high API costs, tendency to loop), Auto-GPT's cultural impact was enormous—it defined public understanding of AI agents and spawned imitators like BabyAGI and AgentGPT. Richards originally wanted an AI to email him daily AI news; he ended up creating the template for the 2023-2024 agent explosion.

Evidence Archive

IMPIgnited Spring 2023 AI agent craze, mainstream media coverage[source]
AUTChains LLM thoughts to autonomously achieve goals via task decomposition[source]
TECPioneered autonomous goal-pursuing agent pattern[source]

Score History

Score history will appear here after future reviews.

Current score: 47/90

Metadata

Inception2023-03-01
ClassificationAutonomous Agent Framework
Websitegithub.com
Last Updated2026-01-16