Construct Computer vs Lumi: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Construct Computer and Lumi — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Construct Computer
Construct
An AI employee with its own cloud Linux computer that runs workflows, builds internal tools, and finishes scheduled work for small teams.
Key features
- Dedicated Cloud Computer: Each user's agent gets a real Linux cloud desktop, so it can run software and produce files rather than only generating text.
- Reusable Workflows: Encode a process once as agent steps, connected apps, and notifications, then version, schedule, and let any teammate re-run it.
- Internal Tool Builder: Describe the tool your team needs and Construct writes, validates, and publishes a working internal app straight into your cloud desktop.
- Scheduled Jobs with History: Schedule an agent prompt, a connected-app action, or a whole workflow to run once or repeatedly, with a full record of results.
- Inspectable Memory: Preferences, decisions, and project context are stored with supporting evidence and history, and can be reviewed, corrected, or forgotten.
- Shared Team Workspace: People, agents, files, apps, and conversations live in one workspace with invitations, roles, and precise access controls.
- Multi-Channel Access: Message Construct from the web, Slack, Telegram, Discord slash commands, or its own native email inbox, with per-channel routing and access policies.
- Cited Research Reports: Gathers sources, compares details, and turns open-ended questions into cited research you can review or share.
- Resumable Long Runs: Jobs that fail partway through resume from where they stopped rather than restarting, targeting reliability on multi-step work.
- Data Ownership and BYOK: Workspaces are isolated and never used as training data, you own the output, and Pro allows bringing your own model keys.
Best for
- Process Automation: Turning a recurring manual business process into a versioned workflow anyone on the team can trigger.
- Internal Tooling: Shipping a small internal app for a team need without pulling in engineering time.
- Inbox and CRM Follow-Through: Letting an agent read, reply, and close the loop across connected tools instead of leaving half-finished automations.
- Market and Topic Research: Producing cited research reports on a subject for review or client delivery.
- Scheduled Reporting: Running a recurring report or data pull on a schedule and keeping the result history in one place.
- Solo Founder Leverage: Handing off operational work as a one-person company without hiring a first operations employee.
- Cross-Channel Team Requests: Letting teammates hand work to the agent from Slack, Discord, Telegram, or email without changing tools.
Lumi
A Google PAIR prototype that adds AI-powered annotations, granular summaries, and custom Q&A to arXiv research papers.
Key features
- Granular Summaries: Generates summaries at multiple granularities (section- or paragraph-level) to surface key ideas and make long papers easier to skim and comprehend.
- Inline Annotations: Attaches contextual, sentence- or paragraph-specific annotations directly onto the paper text to explain terminology, methods, or results in place.
- Custom Q&A: Lets users ask targeted questions about a paper and receive context-aware answers derived from the document content to clarify methods, results, or motivations.
- arXiv Integration: Built specifically to work with arXiv papers, enabling quick access to preprints and their metadata while preserving original paper structure.
- Open-Source Prototype: Source code available under an Apache-2.0 license on GitHub, allowing inspection, reuse, and community-driven improvements.
- Research Navigation Aids: Provides tools to jump between sections, references, and highlighted insights to streamline literature review workflows.
- Contextual Highlighting: Highlights important sentences and phrases based on AI analysis to draw attention to key contributions and claims.
- Collaboration-Friendly Outputs: Produces shareable annotations and summaries that can be used to coordinate reading lists and group discussions.
- Inline annotations layered on top of arXiv papers
- Granular and multi-level summaries for sections and full papers
- Custom Q&A over the paper content (user-driven queries)
- Lightweight AI layer integrated into the reading interface
- Browser/web-based reading experience (lumi.withgoogle.com)
- Open-source codebase on GitHub (Apache-2.0) allowing local integration and extension
- Designed for improved paper navigation and comprehension
Best for
- Rapid literature review: Quickly generate section-level summaries across many arXiv papers to triage and prioritize reading lists.
- Clarifying complex passages: Ask focused questions about specific paragraphs or figures to get concise, context-aware explanations.
- Teaching and learning: Instructors and students use inline annotations and summaries to make advanced papers accessible in coursework.
- Collaborative annotation: Teams annotate papers with AI-generated notes to share insights and discussion points during journal clubs or research meetings.
- Relevance triage: Determine whether a paper contains needed methods or results without reading it end-to-end by scanning AI-highlighted passages and summaries.
- Research discovery: Identify related work and key contributions faster by surfacing dominant themes and claims within a paper.
- Accelerating literature reviews and paper digestion for researchers
- Explaining complex methods or equations within academic papers
- Creating Q&A study aids from research articles
- Annotating and sharing insights on arXiv papers within teams
- Prototyping integrations that enhance document-based workflows