GhostWriter by MyHandler vs Thinking Orbs: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of GhostWriter by MyHandler and Thinking Orbs — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
GhostWriter by MyHandler
MyHandler.ai
Windows writing assistant that reads the screen around your cursor on a hotkey double-tap and types a context-aware draft in your voice.
Key features
- Hotkey Double-Tap Drafting: No prompt or dictation is needed — a double-tap with the cursor in any text field triggers capture and drafting directly in place.
- Screen Context Capture: Reads the thread, form or partial sentence surrounding the cursor locally on the machine, using that on-screen context as the entire input.
- Writing Intent Classification: Determines whether the moment calls for a reply, a continuation, a filled-in answer or a fresh compose before writing a single word.
- Sender and Identity Mapping: Maps each message in a thread to its sender and works out which handle is the user's, so the draft answers the other party rather than the user's own words.
- Calendar Cross-Check: When a draft proposes a time, it is validated against the next two weeks of a connected calendar before the text appears.
- Selection Rewriting: Selecting existing text before the hotkey rewrites that selection instead of composing something new.
- Nothing Sent Automatically: The generated text appears at the cursor for the user to read, edit or delete; sending always remains a manual step.
- Local Vault with Zero-Retention Cloud: Capture runs against an encrypted vault on the user's own PC and the assembled context is processed by a zero-data-retention cloud model.
Best for
- Email Backlog: Clearing a queue of owed replies by drafting each one from the thread already on screen instead of retyping the same answer.
- Chat and Slack Replies: Answering a message in a team chat where the draft is grounded in who asked whom for what in the visible thread.
- Web Form Completion: Filling a blank answer box under a question on a web form or application without switching to a separate chat window.
- Sentence Continuation: Picking up a half-written paragraph exactly where it stops, without the assistant restating what was already typed.
- Meeting Scheduling Replies: Responding to a request for a time with a proposal that has already been checked against the user's calendar.
- Tone-Sensitive Rewrites: Selecting a blunt or rough draft and having it rewritten in the user's own voice before sending.
Thinking Orbs
Yogesh
Thinking Orbs is a lightweight React library of animated orb status indicators for AI interfaces such as thinking, searching and compacting.
Key features
- State-Based Orbs: An Orb component with states like reasoning, searching, working, retrying, compacting and waiting to mirror what the agent is doing.
- Zero Dependencies: The React orb needs nothing but React and the plain JS version needs nothing at all, at about 3.8 KB gzipped.
- Customizable Props: Control variant, size, speed, density, dot size, tilt, pause and screen-reader label to fit any interface.
- Opt-in Shapes and Renders: Import extra shapes like cube and renders like halftone separately so only used code is bundled.
- Flexible Installation: Install from npm, pnpm, yarn or bun, or copy the component into a project with shadcn.
- Tintable with CSS: Color orbs with text-* utility classes so they match the host UI theme.
- Interactive Playground: A web playground to preview all states, shapes and renders before integrating.
- llms.txt Support: Publishes an llms.txt so coding assistants can integrate the library correctly.
Best for
- Chat Interface Status: Show a thinking or reasoning animation while an LLM responds.
- Agent Progress Display: Indicate searching, working or background-task states in an agentic coding UI.
- Context Compaction Feedback: Visualize compacting states when conversation history is summarized.
- Retry and Waiting States: Signal retries or waiting-for-input states with distinct orb variants.
- Design System Components: Add a polished AI loading indicator to an in-house React component library.
- Prototype AI Products: Quickly drop a refined status animation into demos and prototypes.