---
title: "Pace vs Samuel"
description: "An evidence-based comparison of Pace and Samuel: fully on-device vs cloud self-modifying plugins."
canonical: https://heypace.app/compared/samuel/
last-updated: 2026-08-27
---
# Pace vs Samuel

An evidence-based comparison of Pace and Samuel: fully on-device vs cloud self-modifying plugins.

## Product posture

- **Product:** [Samuel](https://github.com/sambuild04/screen-voice-agent)
- **Maintainer:** sambuild04
- **License:** MIT; open source under MIT
- **Runtime posture:** cloud
- **Speech-to-text:** OpenAI Realtime API
- **Reasoner:** OpenAI Realtime API + GPT-5.5 (plugin generation) + GPT-4o Vision
- **Text-to-speech:** OpenAI Realtime API
- **Screen-aware:** Yes

## What the competing product does well

- Self-modifying — writes and hot-loads its own plugins at runtime using GPT-5.5.
- Auto-repair — detects plugin failures and patches code automatically (up to 2 attempts).
- Hears system audio via ScreenCaptureKit with PID-level filtering, not just microphone.

## Where Pace differs

Samuel's self-modifying plugin system and system-audio listening are genuinely novel — Pace has neither. But Samuel is fully cloud (OpenAI APIs). Pace is fully on-device. The plugin auto-repair loop is the most interesting idea here.

This comparison does not claim ratings, market rank, or user-review scores.