PPublic AI Agents

Public AI Agents Inside a Retail Brokerage Account

Public put AI agents into its brokerage app on March 31, 2026, and by September users could point them at prediction markets through Kalshi. An agent starts as a sentence, such as “sweep checking cash above $20,000 into a bond account.” The AI asks follow-up questions, builds a rule-based workflow and shows it for approval. Once the investor signs off, the agent watches for its conditions and places the trade or moves the cash itself.

The app is free and agents run inside a Public account, so the costs are the trading and account fees on Public’s schedule. Public AI Agents score 8.7/10 on our scale. They suit self-directed US investors who already know what strategy they want and would like it to run while they are at work.

Building a Public Agent From One Prompt

Public calls its setup agentic brokerage. The agent lives inside the investor’s authenticated account, so there are no API keys and no outside platforms to connect.

Describing the Investing Goal

The investor writes a prompt in plain language or picks a ready-made agent from a marketplace with five categories. Public also runs a Prompt Hub with guidance on writing agent prompts.

Answer the Follow-Up Questions

The AI asks what it needs to turn the idea into rules: which account, how large, how often, and what should trigger action. For a covered call agent it might ask which holdings to write calls against and what strike distance to use.

Reviewing the Visual Rule Plan

Public shows the proposed workflow as a visual plan. The investor can change it with more prompts or edit parameters directly. Fortune described the step this way: the agent turns the request into fixed rules, and the user approves them before the agent can act.

Activation and the Activity Feed

Every agent needs explicit sign-off before it runs. Once active, it checks its conditions on schedule and acts only when they are met. The activity feed records every check, including those that did not trigger, and the transaction history logs each trade with account, status, price and quantity.

Pause, Edit or Stop

Any agent can be paused, edited or shut down at any time. Public says agents execute only the workflow the investor defined and run on its own infrastructure, not across the open internet.

Writing Prompts That Become Clean Rules

Agents follow exactly what is approved, so vague prompts make vague rules. Name the account, the amount, the trigger and the frequency. “Sell 10% of my bank stocks the day after the Fed cuts rates” is clearer than “protect me from rate cuts.” State limits too, such as a maximum trade size. Public’s Prompt Hub covers how to phrase requests, and the follow-up questions catch some gaps, but the investor reads the final rules before activation.

A Week With Three Public Agents

Picture an investor running three agents. A cash agent checks her checking balance every Friday and sweeps anything above $20,000 into the high-yield account. A covered call agent writes calls on two large holdings each month. A hedge agent waits for a CPI print above 4%. In a quiet week, the feed shows the cash agent moving $1,200, the call agent rolling one position and the hedge agent checking the CPI release and doing nothing. Each line in the feed records what was checked and why it acted or did not.

The balances and holdings are our example. The behavior follows Public’s description of the feed.

Public Agent Templates and Supported Assets

Public’s agent page lists example templates. They are illustrations, not recommendations.

Across the platform, Public offers more than 9,000 stocks, ETFs, single and multi-leg options, 60+ crypto assets, fractional corporate bonds and a high-yield cash account. Agents can also research assets with 30 years of earnings, financials and price data. Kalshi event contracts are available on Public, and Fortune reported in September 2026 that users can deploy agents on them.

Costs Behind a Free Public Agent

Public lists the app as free. Agents run inside a Public account at no separate charge on the agent page. The money comes from what the agents do. Public’s fee schedule covers margin interest, fees Public earns on bond trades, Treasury markups and advisory fees for advised accounts. Public also lists options rebates of $0.06 to $0.18, depending on conditions.

A Cash Sweep Agent Over One Year

Say an investor keeps $35,000 in checking and builds the idle cash agent with a $20,000 floor. The agent moves $15,000 into Public’s high-yield cash account, which lists a 3.30% variable APY. If the rate held all year, that $15,000 would earn about $495. The balances are our example; the APY changes with rates.

A Covered Call Agent and Its Risks

The $5,000-a-month covered call template needs enough shares to write calls against. Premium income is never fixed, and covered calls cap gains if the stock rises past the strike. Options can lose value quickly. Public’s disclosures state the investor is solely responsible for a strategy’s suitability.

Margin and Bond Agents

Any agent that buys on margin adds margin interest. Agents that buy bonds pay the fees Public earns on each bond trade. Read the fee schedule for the assets an agent will touch before activating it.

Frequent trading has its own cost. An agent that rebalances weekly creates more trades, more taxable events and more chances for slippage than one that acts monthly. Set the frequency to the slowest pace the strategy allows.

Public Agents, Waitlist Launch Through Prediction Markets

This timeline is compiled from Public’s release, its agent page and Fortune’s reporting.

The pace is quick. Six months after a waitlist launch, agents reached a new asset class. For investors, that means features change often, and Public’s agent page warns that some capabilities are not yet available and may change at release.

Investors Who Fit Public Agents

• Investors with a defined strategy: Agents follow rules; they do not invent a plan.
• Options sellers: Covered calls and multi-leg strategies with conditional execution are built in.
• People with idle cash: Sweep agents move cash above a floor into bond or high-yield accounts.
• Event-driven traders: Agents can act on CPI prints, rate cuts or price spikes while the investor is away.
• Existing Public customers: No new account or API setup is needed.

The common thread is a rule the investor would follow anyway but often misses because of timing. Agents watch around the clock; the investor decides the rule once.

Investors Who May Prefer to Wait on Public Agents

• New investors: Options and margin templates can magnify losses; build experience first.
• People wanting advice: Public describes agent output as informational and not advice.
• Investors outside the US: Public brokerage is offered by a US broker-dealer.
• Users of other brokers: Agents work only inside a Public account.

What App Store Reviewers Say About Public

The App Store shows 4.7 out of 5 from 86K ratings for the Public app. These ratings cover the whole app. Reviewers like that it is quick to learn and well organized, that they can buy fractional shares from $5, that support responds and that the community feed is active. One mentions an AI assistant that explains trading concepts.

Complaints in the visible reviews include a long, unresolved account transfer with unhelpful support and a request for deeper charts with technical indicators. The visible reviews predate the agents, so the rating speaks to the app around them.

For agent users, the transfer complaint is the one to note. Cash sweep agents move money between accounts, and smooth transfers matter. Test a small sweep before setting a large floor. The request for deeper charts matters less here, because agents act on rules and data the investor sets in the prompt.

Safeguards and Open Points With Public Agents

• Sign-off: Every agent needs explicit approval before running. Read the rules line by line.
• Logs: Check the activity feed weekly; it shows checks that did not trigger as well as trades.
• Rule drift: Markets change. Revisit thresholds such as a 4% CPI trigger or a $20,000 cash floor each quarter.
• Features in flux: Public says some listed capabilities are not yet available.
• Account protection: Brokerage is through Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC; crypto through Zero Hash is not FDIC or SIPC protected.

One more check is worth building into a routine. When an agent fires, compare the trade in the transaction history with what the rule said should happen: the account, the size and the price condition. Public logs each trade with account, status, price and quantity, so a mismatch is quick to spot. If anything looks off, pause the agent first and edit second.

Families sharing finances should also agree who may create agents on an account. An agent built by one person keeps running until someone pauses it.

Kalshi Partnership and the Agent Rollout

Public announced its AI agents on March 31, 2026, with co-CEO Jannick Malling saying they help translate investors’ intent into action. The release said agents were live for select members, with a waitlist for others, and that they run only on Public’s infrastructure inside an authenticated environment.

On September 24, 2026, Fortune reported that Public had partnered with Kalshi so users could deploy AI agents on prediction markets. Co-founder and co-CEO Leif Abraham told Fortune that agents can monitor markets when you are not looking at a screen. Kalshi supplies the event contracts and handles those trades.

Public AI Agents Rate 8.7 on Our Scale

Public AI Agents score 8.7/10. They act on their own once approved, cover stocks, options, crypto, bonds and cash, log every check and come inside a free app rated 4.7 from 86K App Store ratings. The rules are fixed at sign-off, which keeps an agent from drifting outside what the investor approved.

Public could mark which agent features are live and which are still coming. An investor trying it should start with a cash sweep agent, which moves money between accounts without market risk, and watch the activity feed for a month before writing any options agent.

For an experienced options trader, the covered call template is where agents save the most time. Write it for one holding first, compare the premiums it collects with what you would have done by hand, and only then add more positions.

Prediction market agents are the newest piece. They add a different kind of risk, since event contracts settle on outcomes, and Kalshi handles those trades. Treat them as a separate test with a small budget, and keep them apart from long-term holdings.

Investor Questions About Public AI Agents

Do Public AI Agents Cost Extra?

The Public app is free, and agents run inside a Public account. Costs come from the trades and accounts agents use, under Public’s fee schedule.

Can a Public Agent Trade Without My Approval?

An agent needs your explicit sign-off before it runs. After that, it trades whenever its approved conditions are met, and it cannot act outside them. You can pause or stop it at any time.

What Can Public Agents Trade?

Agents can work with stocks, ETFs, single and multi-leg options and crypto, sweep cash into bond and high-yield accounts and create Generated Assets. Fortune reported that agents can also be deployed on Kalshi prediction markets.

Are Public Agents Investment Advice?

No. Public describes agent output as informational and illustrative, and says the investor is responsible for a strategy’s suitability.

How Should I Write a Public Agent Prompt?

Name the account, amount, trigger and frequency, and add limits such as a maximum trade size. Public’s Prompt Hub gives guidance, and the AI asks follow-up questions before you approve the final rules.

Is My Account Protected?

Brokerage accounts are with Open to the Public Investing, Inc., a member of FINRA and SIPC. Crypto is held through Zero Hash LLC and is not FDIC or SIPC protected.