Microsoft Clippy (1997)
Microsoft shipped Clippy, an animated assistant, with Office 97 to proactively help users write documents. Users found its unsolicited interruptions more annoying than useful, and Microsoft removed it in later versions.
Clippy became a punchline and a symbol of software that gets in the way.
It taught makers that proactive agents must earn the right to interrupt, a lesson still relevant to agent design.
Muse is proactive by design, making the reception of unwanted suggestions a live question about user tolerance.
