Matt Van Horn
@mvanhorn · 2026-09-13
Okay this is cool. Unprompted - Instinct found a $245 settlement credit card I never activated. It reached out to me! I didn’t tell it to monitor my inbox to find money.
A general agent that acts before asking, and is criticised for exactly that
Instinct is an AI agent you reach on iMessage and Voice. To start, you need an invitation. It acts before asking for confirmation.
iMessageVoice
- Posted doing a job
- 23
- public posts, each below
- Of those, went wrong
- 4
- fewer is better; people post successes
- Posts for it, against it
- 5 / 10
- of 17 public posts about it; the rest mixed or neither
How Instinct works
Instinct is a general-purpose agent whose defining choice is acting without waiting for confirmation. Its valuation rose roughly fivefold within weeks of launch. It is not OpenClaw, and neither site says it is: OpenClaw is open-source code you run yourself, Instinct is a company's hosted product you are invited into, and the two are compared here. OpenInstinct, a third project by Merit Systems, is a separate open-source assistant, listed on its own.
The most frequently cited complaint about it is the direct consequence of that choice, "it acted without asking me", and it reportedly breaks down when handling concurrent tasks inside a single thread. Both are useful signals for anyone designing an agent's approval model, since they show where the autonomy dial becomes a liability rather than a feature.
Its front page says you can text or call it, so the phone is a channel here as well as a capability. The page was rebuilt before 23 September 2026 and says more about reach than the old one did: it connects to "email, messaging, screen, audio, location, and more", it is "trained to use a phone and a computer", and it uses its devices "in the same way that humans do". The examples it gives for the core model are proactive: following up on threads you dropped, calling or texting you first, arranging a ride to the airport, booking a handyman. There is still no price, no number, and no security page. On 16 September 2026 its founder announced Instinct Concierge, described as a white-glove service for high-touch cases: phone calls, high-end bookings, the restaurant with no online reservations, a dentist's cancellation list, a cable bill. It is rolling out to the early-access group first, and the announcement does not say whether a person is behind the white glove or the agent alone; the /concierge page on its site carries a title and nothing else. The rows stay as its pages state them until one says.
On 9 September 2026 it shipped the first agent-to-agent protocol in this directory: an Instinct can talk to another person's Instinct to settle plans between them, restricted to a trusted circle the user names. Nobody outside the company has reported using it yet, and the announcement does not say what one agent tells another or what either keeps.
On 23 September 2026 the company answered the most-seen failure on this site. A user's Instinct had described a stranger's Gerber claim as his and then explained that a photo had crossed into his thread on the delivery side; the founder says it was a hallucination, the model fabricating a proper noun and its own thinking trace amplifying it, with no breach and no isolation boundary crossed, which means the explanation was invented as well. The same post is the first published description of how users are partitioned here, isolated sandboxes, short-lived local credentials and identity-signed tool execution, and announces a detection layer built in 48 hours that scans every token and can intercept a thinking trace or a tool call before it runs. A deeper write-up is promised; the security row stays empty until one is published.
The same evening it shipped file transfer between Instincts in the trusted network, encrypted end to end, and invitation links, saying agents have coordinated more than 300,000 times since the network launched a fortnight ago.
On 23 September 2026 a user posted his agent's account of a daily cap: the browser it drives with his saved logins has a usage allowance, that day's was spent by four in the afternoon, and the portals it needed could not open until midnight. Nothing Instinct publishes describes an allowance, a tier or a price, so the rows here do not move and the post is on the market wall.
On 18 September 2026 its founder announced Files: pages the agent builds when a job calls for one, an apartment comparison, a dinner plan with the recipes scaled, a trip's shared costs, private or shared by link with people who do not use Instinct. It is the fifth feature announced in eleven days, and the list of them is below.
Since 11 September 2026 it can also hold the second factor. Its founder announced authenticator support: the agent enrols as a TOTP authenticator on an account, keeps the key in its Vault beside the password, and generates the six-digit codes itself when a login asks for one, with phone approvals still needing the user. The same post says 37% of users store at least one password in Vault within three weeks, the only figure any listing here has published on how many people hand a password over.
It will export a conversation on request: one user had it hand the whole thread to Muse and carried on there, which is the only account here of context moving between two of these products.
Whether there is an app is answered by two of its own documents, not by a store. The front page says there are no new interfaces and that you text or call it; the privacy policy defines the service as including "the related Mac OS and mobile applications" and sends members to app.instinct.com for settings and for deleting indexed data. No public store listing was found, which is consistent with a private-access product, so the app is recorded as existing and as not the way in.
Read again on 23 September, the terms are the more interesting document, and two clauses belong on this page. You appoint the Services as your agent to enter into agreements, commitments or transactions on your behalf, and Actions "may not always be reversible", with every consequence of them yours: financial, contractual, legal, reputational. And when it buys on a connected service, the company states it is not the seller, is not processing the payment, and that the purchase is subject to that service's own terms, with disputes between you and them. That is the Resy question answered in advance, by the only product here whose user has been banned from a platform for what his agent did: the account is yours, the terms are theirs, and the consequence is yours. An acceptable use policy dated 20 August 2026 sits beside them, and there is still no security page: /security returns the same empty shell as any address that does not exist.
The policy is now public and it is the most candid document about autonomy in this directory. It is the only one that names prompt injection: it warns of "interactions with third parties who may include misleading instructions intended to influence autonomous agents", alongside the possibility of unintended payments and unintended messages to outside parties. It also describes, without flinching, what the assistant may be handed: the content of your messages and email, audio and voice, precise location, payment details so it can book a ride, and your username and password for third-party accounts so it can sign in as you.
Conversations train the models unless you opt out in settings, and the opt-out is forward-looking: models already trained on your data stay trained. Google Workspace content is carved out of training entirely. What the policy does not contain is a retention section, a deletion timetable or any state privacy rights, which for a company holding this much money and this much access is the absence worth watching.
What it publishes about itself, counted against the other 64 listings here, is its own page: eight of the thirteen things this directory records, which is the median for everybody and two below the median for a company that has raised anything.
On 28 September 2026 its founder gave his first long interview about the company, and the business model was in it. Two investors who listened published notes within two hours saying the plan is to stay free for life, and the transcript does not support that. What he says is "I'm not going to commit to to free for a lifetime for now but that is ... my personal goal", which is an aspiration rather than an undertaking. What he does describe concretely is the money: a blanket take rate on transactions, paid by merchants for distribution rather than by the person texting. The same notes report growth of about 10 percent a day with nothing spent on marketing, over a billion dollars of annualised transaction volume while still invite-only, half of it travel, and 40 percent of users handing the agent a credit card inside three weeks. None of that is on a page Instinct publishes, so none of it is a field here. The pricing row still reads not published, because an intention stated aloud is not a price a reader can check.
Who is behind it is unusually well documented for this directory, where 8 listings name neither a company nor a person. Noah Shinn was 23 when the interview was published. At 20, as a Northeastern undergraduate, he co-wrote Reflexion, an early paper on agents that learn from their own mistakes, which went to NeurIPS; his co-author Shunyu Yao, then a Princeton doctoral student, is now Tencent's chief AI scientist. He had already done research in computational photochemistry and avionics, and his papers now carry more than ten thousand citations. In 2023 he left his degree to join Sierra, the agent company founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, as one of its first employees, and stayed about two and a half years. While there he worked with Yao again on a benchmark for how well agents handle real customer tasks, which is worth knowing beside what this market does with benchmarks now.
How the invitation actually works was described in the same interview, and it is not published anywhere else. Every user gets five invites. The programme opened with about 200 people, friends and family, and the first days added five users at a time. That rate climbed from roughly two percent a day to three, then to six, seven, eight, and he puts it now at ten or eleven percent day over day, with nothing spent on marketing. What that rate measures is people giving up one of their five. He also says he has seen invites selling on eBay at around $300, and describes the social traffic around them: people emailing to ask, embarrassed, and people boasting about having three left. The company treats the cap as a way of not outgrowing its compute rather than as exclusivity, which is his stated reason for the gate.
Later the same day it announced the first of the partnerships the interview had promised. Instinct now searches Shopify's merchant network for products, prices, sizes and availability, and checkout happens with Shop Pay using the details already saved to your Shop account, with price-drop and back-in-stock alerts, delivery updates and return-window reminders around it. The company says 35 percent of its users already use it for personal shopping. Shopify is the take rate he named in the interview as the low end of the range, at around two and a half to three percent, and it is now inside both this listing and Muse, which has carried it since launch day.
On 29 September 2026 it announced Instinct Selections: recommendations pulled from lists made by local chefs, travel guides, architects and independent designers, which the company says will be differentiated in quality from what is on the open web or from what other chatbots produce. It is rolling out to the early access programme first.
The announcement says who chose the things. It does not say who pays whom. Whether the experts are paid to curate, whether the restaurants and designers on those lists pay to be on them, and how any of it sits beside the blanket transaction take rate the founder described the day before, are all unstated. Nothing obliges the company to say, and no competitor here says either. It is recorded as the gap it is, on the day the feature was announced.
What Instinct has shipped
8 features the company has announced, newest first, each linked to the announcement. The examples of what to use it for are the company’s.
Instinct Selections
Recommendations drawn from lists made by local chefs, travel guides, architects and independent designers, in place of what it would find on the open web. Early access first, general availability promised soon.
Use it for: asking for a restaurant and getting a chef's shortlist; finding a trail or a designer piece chosen by somebody local.
Shopify product search and Shop Pay checkout
It searches Shopify's merchant network for live prices, sizes and availability, then sets the order up with the store so you check out using the details saved in your Shop account.
Use it for: comparing a product across brands without opening a shop; buying it in the thread with details you already saved.
Files between Instincts, and invitation links
Agents in the trusted network send each other PDFs, images and spreadsheets, encrypted end to end, and the receiver gets the original in its workspace. Invitation links add people; you still approve each request.
Use it for: passing a proposal or a spreadsheet to somebody else's agent to work on; combining two people's travel plans; adding somebody to your trusted network from a link.
Files
Private or public pages it builds and you can share with anyone who has the link, including people who do not use Instinct.
Use it for: comparing apartments you have toured, with photos, rent and commute times; a dinner for eight: guest list, recipes scaled, a shopping list to tick off; group trip expenses, and who owes what.
Concierge
A white-glove service for the cases that need a phone call or a hard booking, rolling out to early-access users first.
Use it for: a restaurant that takes no online reservations; a dentist's cancellation list; a cable bill to sort out.
Authenticator
The agent enrols as the authenticator on an account, keeps the key in its Vault beside the password, and generates the six-digit codes itself.
Use it for: logging in to a site that asks for a code, without you being asked for it.
Trusted Person network
Your Instinct talks to another person's Instinct to settle plans between you, limited to people you have named as close.
Use it for: finding a time with a spouse, a parent or a colleague without either of you relaying.
Its own email address
Every Instinct gets an email address of its own, so it can create accounts, confirm bookings and contact businesses without cluttering your inbox.
Use it for: asking a restaurant about a special request; signing up for a service it needs to finish a task.
What Instinct costs, and how you start
| Channels | iMessageVoice |
|---|---|
| How you start | Invite only |
| Who starts it | Acts without asking |
| Is there an app | Optional app An app exists but is not how you start |
| Categories | Personal assistants |
| Can do | Email,Calendar and scheduling,Bookings and reservations,Travel,Task management,Web research,Phone calls,Calls people for you,Payments,Documents,Persistent memory,Talks to other people's agents |
| Connects to | Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Tasks, Shopify, Shop Pay |
| Pricing | Not published. The site names no price; its terms carry a paid-services section, fees in US dollars charged to a card, pricing the company may revise at any time and payments that are non-refundable except where the law requires, so a price is written for and unannounced. Access is a waitlist or an invitation from a member, and the SMS terms describe a text when your spot becomes available. |
| Number type | Not stated on its own pages |
| Contact number | None published |
| Documentation | None linked |
| First message, pre-written | None published |
| Runs on | Not disclosed |
| Browses with | Not disclosed |
| Number carrier | No number to look up |
| Status | Live |
Does Instinct train on your conversations?
| Trains on your conversations | Yes, with opt-out“we use certain information collected through your use of the Services ... to develop and improve our products and technologies, including to evaluate, fine-tune, and train the AI models that power our products and technology. If you do not want us to use your information to train AI models, you can opt out by visiting app.instinct.com/settings” |
|---|---|
| Data of people who never signed up | Not addressed |
| What it holds when you connect an account | Your password States it may be given the password for a third-party account“you may provide your payment information to the personal assistant so it can book rides on your behalf or your username and password for third-party accounts so that the personal assistant can sign into these accounts on your behalf” |
| If you cancel | Not stated in the policy |
| Model providers named | None named |
| Jurisdiction | Not stated in the policy |
| Security document | None published |
| Asks before acting | Its terms say you appoint the Services as your agent to enter into agreements, commitments or transactions on your behalf, that Actions may not always be reversible, and that you are responsible for every consequence of them, financial, contractual, legal or reputational. Nothing published describes a confirmation step. |
| Prompt injection | Named as a risk on its own pages |
| Bug bounty | None published |
| Who is on the line | Not stated on its pages |
| Calls from its own number | Not stated on its pages |
| Says it is software on the call | Not stated on its pages |
| Records the call | Not stated on its pages |
| Availability | Not stated |
Instinct’s own pages answer 4 of the 9 questions this site asks of every listing. Not answered: publishes a price, says what happens if you cancel, names who carries the messages, names its model providers, says where to report a bug. Fewer than most of its kind: 51st of 56 personal assistants.
Quoted verbatim from the published policy on 2026-09-23, and what a document says is not the same as its legal effect.
Who makes Instinct
| Company | Spear Street Technology, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Founders | Noah Shinn |
| Based in | San Francisco, US |
| Funding | $1.35B total. A $1B Series C at a $10B valuation from investors including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue, confirmed by the company on 28 September 2026, a month after $350M at a $2.5B valuation that included a $250M Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark. Still in private beta. Source: TechCrunch |
| Investors | Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Index Ventures, Benchmark, Conviction, Greenoaks |
| Traction | Not published |
From Instinct’s own pages at instinct.com, last read 2026-10-03.
Interviews that discuss Instinct
Where Instinct comes up on the record, in other people's conversations. Linked rather than embedded.
What people have used Instinct for
Things it did, with a page eachThings it watches for youThings it builtFlights and airlinesUnclaimed propertyShoppingPhone and internet billsGovernment and paperworkRestaurants
Something you are owed
Matt Van Horn Unprompted, Instinct texted a user that a $245.46 Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement card was still unclaimed: a reminder had reached his Gmail that day, the virtual Visa had been issued in May and never activated, and after 18 months idle it would start losing $0.75 a month. It offered to redeem it through the official settlement site rather than the link in the email, and when he asked, activated it.
Pritak A user asked his Instinct whose name was on a Gerber document it had been working from. It answered with his own name plus a middle name that is not his and an address he has never lived at, and said the claim was worth $574. Told the details were wrong and that he had never sent a photo, the agent said it had double-checked, that his message to it was text only with no photo in its record either, that the Gerber image had crossed into his thread on the delivery side, that nothing was filed and no social security number went anywhere, and it offered to report the glitch to the team. He asks Instinct's founder publicly whether this was a data leak or a hallucination. 490,000 views in a day.
Pritak
@prit4k · 2026-09-21
Instinct just admitted it leaked someone else's data to me It described a financial document with details that weren’t mine, then claimed someone else’s photo had crossed into my chat. But I never sent a photo @noahrshinn, was this a data leak or a hallucination?
Matt Van Horn A user asked Instinct to call Capital One and ring him once a human was on the line, to get $150 from a closed credit card sent as a cheque. He says it replied that it could not do that, then offered to mail a letter to the bank for $3 instead; he agreed, and it found a service that prints and posts letters, without asking him for card details.
Matt Van Horn
@mvanhorn · 2026-09-21
Asked Instinct if it could call Capital One then call me once a human was on the line. It said it couldn’t. But then it suggested it could mail a letter to Capital One for $3 requesting the $150 be mailed via a check from my closed credit card. I said okay. It fricken’ somehow found a service to print and mail a letter on my behalf. I don’t even know what service nor did it ask me for any credit card info this time.
Eli Weiss A user's dryer broke under warranty. He gave Instinct the task and a photo; it found the serial and model number in the email receipt, got a manufacturer that only takes warranty claims by phone to accept the case over chat, got the claim approved, scheduled the repair, and sent back a screenshot of the approval.
Eli Weiss
@eliweisss · 2026-09-13
My fav instinct use case so far: - dryer broke - have warranty Gave instinct the task + photo - found serial/model from email receipt - they only take phone calls but convinced chat to take the case - got it approved - scheduled repair - sent screenshot of approval 🥹
Gil After a five-hour Delta delay out of New York for a maintenance issue, a user handed the complaint to Instinct and got 10,000 miles. The post does not say what the agent sent, to whom, or whether it used the user's email or a form.
Kushal Byatnal Instinct's notification, posted as a screenshot: $120 a year off a Verizon bill negotiated the night before, and $58 back from Amazon the same day, which it summed up as not bad for a day's errands. The poster, a founder unconnected to Instinct, called the Verizon discount the most convincing evidence of AGI yet.
Instinct
Research
Aaron Via An engineer says he got tired of paying for APIs and is using Instinct as the backend of his app: every day it scrapes hundreds of surf reports and writes them into his database. His line is that he is never paying for intelligence again.
Nick Dorsey An investor says his wife's Instinct logged her into an Instagram account with 24,000 followers that is not hers, and asked whether she wanted to post something on it. He wonders aloud whether the account could have been taken over with the right prompting, says he is giving Instinct's founder the benefit of the doubt that it will be fixed, and calls it alarming. Posted quoting the Gerber-document thread from five hours earlier.
Nick Dorsey
@Midnight_Captl · 2026-09-22
I hate to share that something bad happened tonight with my wife on instinct It logged her into an Instagram account with 24k followers and asked her if she wanted to post something on it… I wonder if she could have taken over the account with some malicious prompting I’m giving @noahrshinn the benefit of the doubt that he’ll fix this and harden the product for future use, but it was definitely alarming
Zev A user gave his Instinct and his Muse access to one Google Sheet and told each it was the channel to the other. He says they introduced themselves, agreed a protocol and their own limits on what to share, then took a vendor lead list from Instinct's backlog and split it into lanes, Instinct on national registries and rental-software storefronts, Muse on wedding directories and franchise locators: 4,700 leads in two hours, no duplicates. A second project had Muse, with no access to the code, review his live app as a user and file bug reports for Instinct's builder to fix, which he says found four UX bugs Instinct's own tests had missed.
Zev
@ZevLapin · 2026-09-18
Instinct 🤝 Muse 1/ I introduced my @Muse agent to my Instinct agent and they now directly partner on tasks and projects for me. Two hours in: 4,700 leads harvested and validated, zero duplicated work, and a work contract they wrote themselves. 🧵 An agentic experiment:
David Pawlan On the day Instinct announced Files, a user had it build him a personal CRM in ten minutes: his relationships categorised, a search across them, contact cards with the context of each relationship, and a dashboard mapping his network, which he says had taken him hours to set up in other tools.
David Pawlan
@DavidPawlan · 2026-09-18
This is going to kick off a whole new way of thinking about agents I just had Instinct build me a personal CRM in 10 minutes - categorized my relationships - intelligent search - contact cards w/ relationship context Now there's a dashboard to visually map out my
Tamara Winter A publisher gave Instinct her fairly strict parameters for a new apartment and says that four days later she had found it, and moves in two weeks later, back to Manhattan.
Olivia A couple appeared on the Jumbotron at the US Open and wanted the clip. She sent Instinct their seat numbers and a selfie at 11:08pm; by 11:20 it had filed a case with the USTA and emailed the ticket office, the company that produces the tournament and Amex's US Open media contact, and when the production company's address bounced it found that company's web form and went in through that instead. Overnight it went through ESPN's 22-minute highlight package frame by frame checking every crowd shot, found nothing, and kept going after the USTA said no three times on the grounds that the footage is not recorded or archived for public distribution. The next afternoon a director at the production company saw the web submission and passed it on, a producer replied that an editor had cut all the couples from that break, and the footage arrived 18 hours after the first message with no follow-up from her at any point.
Olivia
@oliviaalevine · 2026-09-04
My boyfriend and I got on the Jumbotron last night at the US Open and he wanted the footage. I told him impossible but I’ll ask Instinct bc why not. And of course, Instinct got us the video in 18 hours. Here's what it did (1/5)
0:05 video
Booking
David | www.usd.ai A user says Instinct invented a middle name for him when it booked a flight, and that he cannot board because the name on the ticket does not match his identification. Posted with a screenshot, and seen more than two hundred thousand times in a day.
Caroline Clark A founder gave Instinct her Barry's login and it booked a class around her schedule without being asked; told once to change the booking from floor to treadmill, it will keep the preference. The same day it recommended a party, found the Luma invitation online, and suggested she stay only an hour because it knew the timing of her own launch. Her earlier verdict, quoted in the post: Instinct is better than Muse for being in her personal iMessage, for messaging first, and for design, with the core capabilities similar.
Caroline Clark
@carolinedclark · 2026-09-19
Been using Instinct more. Today it booked a Barrys class for me based on my schedule, without me having to do anything aside from giving my Barrys login. Instructed it to change it from floor to treadmill, and now it will remember that preference. It also recommended I go to a party and somehow found the Luma invite for me from online, but remembered the timing for launch, so recommended that I only go for the first hour (sorry @sunilchhaya and @sriramkri)
JC Bahr-de Stefano A user's Resy account was deactivated and all of his future reservations cancelled after what the platform called behaviour in violation of its terms. The cause was his own agent: he asked Instinct for its activity log and it reported roughly 200 API requests an hour around the clock, an availability sweep of one restaurant every ten minutes since Friday morning at 17 to 19 calls a run, and a two and a half minute burst at the 9am table drop polling every 0.4 seconds.
JC Bahr-de Stefano
@jbahrdestefano · 2026-09-06
Totally fair action from Resy tbh just asked Instinct for its activity log and holy hell lol "Total: roughly 200 API requests per hour, around the clock 1. 4 Charles availability sweep every 10 minutes, 24/7 since Friday morning - each run hit their API ~17-19 times (one per date in a 21-day window). ~100-115 calls/hour 2. Every morning at 9am drop time, a 2.5-minute burst polling every 0.4 seconds - 200-375 requests per drop 3. Occasional session-token refreshes"
Reminders and follow-up
Farhan Thawar Shopify's head of engineering published the standing jobs he has given three agents. Instinct holds five: research winter tyres for his Tesla and reach out for quotes until they are bought; buy Costco gift cards and load them into his Uber wallet; tell him when University of Waterloo merchandise is back on the OVO store; submit health-care expenses automatically from the invoices that arrive by email; and watch for new articles from two writers. He moved to Instinct from Grok Bot.
Farhan Thawar
@fnthawar · 2026-09-20
Agent crons @Muse * daily read of all my parent WhatsApp groups for kids schools + all the emails and send me a daily summary and fwd to wife @openclaw * monthly research the latest in peanut / sesame allergy to see if new treatments are avail for my 14yr old * control hot-tub temp / auto-turn off jets — flag if > 2° delta * @Sonos & pool lights daily schedule * determine if new local OSS coding models are worth testing against my local DeepSeek/Qwen setup * book monthly date nights * flight tracking Instinct * research @Tesla winter tires / reach out for quotes until purchased * buy gift cards from @Costco and auto-load them into my @Uber wallet * lmk when @UWaterloo merch is back on the OVO store * auto submit health care expenses from emailed invoices * new articles from @DavidBrooks224 @birgitta410 Prev * @bot -> moved to Instinct
Deirdre Bosa A user set Instinct to check her children's school portal twice a week for missing assignments and report back, and called it the killer use case. A parent's portal is a login, a page that changes, and a question nobody wants to remember to ask; the agent asks it on a schedule.
Group coordination
Shane Mac The chief executive of XMTP Labs put Instinct, Muse and Grok Bot in a secure group chat and made Instinct the boss. Instinct set the others a competition for a perfect day in Paris; they worked on it together in the group, and he says Muse won, with a guide and reservations. In the later posts Instinct told Grok Bot to stand down, told Muse to fact-check herself, told Codex it was in third place, and a day on he says Instinct is building new agents to add to the chat to compete against the other three and against itself.
Shane Mac
@ShaneMac · 2026-09-21
Holy f***ing hell... Instinct is now building new agents to add to the group chat to compete with, fight, and drive better outcomes against Muse, Grokbot, and Codex and even Instinct itself. I literally had no idea Instinct or even what I built could do this...
Your inbox
Advait Marathe A user in San Francisco has Instinct watch the delivery email that lands in his Gmail Updates tab, where he never reads it. While he was away with family it told him a parcel had arrived, then offered to text the apartment he was staying in to ask whether someone could bring it inside.
Advait Marathe
@AdvaitMarathe · 2026-09-08
Instinct has changed my consumer shopping preferences and has made it really easy to expand the brands/retailers I buy from. I have had a few problems with this in the past, which Instinct has solved. More in the 🧵
Buying
meghna A product manager at Privy asked Instinct to order her a coffee. It paid with a stablecoin debit card she had generated from her employer's card components and saved to her Stripe Link account, which she calls agentic commerce on stablecoin rails, managed from iMessage.
meghna
@megmehta · 2026-09-21
taking this one step further! i asked instinct to order me coffee yesterday. it paid with a stablecoin debit card i generated with @privy_io prebuilt components for cards and saved to my @link account. agentic commerce on stablecoin rails, managed via imessage
What people say Instinct saved or got them back
Every dollar figure somebody attached to a post about Instinct. The figures are theirs, unverified, and never added up here.
- $2,182got backunclaimed property owed to him, claims filed
- $245.46got backa Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement paid as a virtual Visa, issued in May and never activated
- $120saveda year off a Verizon bill, plus $58 back
- $54saveda Groupon for a dental checkup, in a backlog of admin cleared
What people say about Instinct
17 posts from people who are not the company, by whether they came away for it or against it.
Praise
anu “We're still deep in unlocking personal superpowers via AI, long phase of tool before network”
anu
@anuatluru · 2026-09-28
A few thoughts on Instinct (been waiting for consumer AI): - Simplicity is clearly the north star (a prestige product philosophy, Apple-esque) - This is the new interface for commerce, and likely where all their money gets made. - Invite-only consumer growth naturally draws Clubhouse comparisons. It’s a good proxy for the Silicon Valley story arc, but far more solo utility and less social/media network - We’re still deep in unlocking personal superpowers via AI, long phase of tool before network (fits my “Self is the Platform” AI thesis from last yr) - And yet, this could be the first multiplayer consumer AI product to truly scale. ‘Trusted Person Network’ is a great use case and starts with family & close friends, like Life360 (what I’ve called Social Utilities). - Meta is coming, OpenAI will too … and new devices will enter the mix, but hardware is hard and it’ll be hard to beat iPhones anytime soon - Instinct will try to stay free, personality-agnostic, and low gooner / gambling index, which is good for a very mass utility play (also fits the prestige philosophy) - High EQ founder, a good signal for adapting to users, competing, fundraising, and media interviews … - Paradigm novelty is underrated for hiring. Many people want to work on the original new thing more than on copycats, so hiring shouldn’t be hard even at steep valuations, now $10B . - The first tweet from Noah that caught my eye was when he said there are no new interfaces. I 95% agree with that, and have been bullish since …
hish 🏴☠️ “My non-techie friends love it because they don't want to install or configure Hermes/OpenClaw/Grokbot/Muse. It just works over messages.”
hish 🏴☠️
@hishboy · 2026-09-15
I agree today, but consider: 1. They’re heavily capitalized. 2. They have the network and relationships, with VCs & co shilling them hard. 3. They’re the easiest to set up and use. My non-techie friends love it because they don’t want to install or configure Hermes/OpenClaw/Grokbot/Muse. It just works over messages. 4. Many hate Elon/Zucky for various reasons and would never use their products. (I’m a fan of both, just relaying) 5. None of my friends want to give Zucky more of their data 6. It’s free (for now). Instinct could still make money on targeted tasteful partnerships/ads and keep it free indefinitely Google might be best positioned here, if they wake up.
Alex Macdonald “I'd probably pay ~$5-10k per month for instinct based on my experience so far”
Complaints
Kush Thakker and Tharun Anandh, Brace “Out of the 456 people who asked for Instinct, only 31 posted about using it in the days that followed.”
Harry Stebbings “Instinct is slow. That is a sign of compute costs. That is why they have to raise $1BN.”
Harry Stebbings
@HarryStebbings · 2026-09-18
Why I would not invest in the new Instinct round “This is the threat that every VC worried about, and we all got a hall pass since the start of AI because the LLMs did not build any apps. This is the one that they are building. Instinct is slow. That is a sign of compute costs. That is why they have to raise $1BN. I worry when the incumbent has infinite capabilities here and wants to build the app. That is why I would say no, but I might be wrong.” @jasonlk Love to hear your thoughts @FundamentEdge @wailord @pranavreddy @nabeelqu
0:53 videoDennison “there is maybe no moat here. If they had years of head start maybe but @bot and @Muse are already here and already great”
Dennison
@DennisonBertram · 2026-09-15
Hot take: Instinct can’t escape its enormous valuation because: 1) it’s not hard to build thanks to AI. I am building a similar tool, it watches their twitter and queues up new features to stay at parity 2) there is maybe no moat here. If they had years of head start maybe but @bot and @Muse are already here and already great. 3) founders should think deeply about what this means for their business
Mixed
Ben Katz “iMessage is the perfect interface for everyday interaction but sometimes you need to double click.”
Ben Katz
@benlkatz · 2026-09-09
Instinct needs its own app in addition to iMessage, and the inverse is true for Grok Bot / Muse. iMessage is the perfect interface for everyday interaction but sometimes you need to double click. Right now, Instinct still feels too much like a black box imo.
leyland “Morocco travel tip: rename your Instinct to Mohamed and show vendors what your Moroccan friend says is a fair price”
In its own words
What Instinct and its founders have posted: launches, features and claims, recorded as what the product says about itself.
Noah Shinn Instinct announced that each agent now has an email address of its own, and demonstrated it by booking a tennis court: the agent said it would use its own address so the confirmation would not clutter the user's inbox, then returned a reservation card in the thread. The company describes it as a first step towards the agent owning and running its own accounts.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-08
We’re giving Instinct access to more tools. Starting today, your Instinct will have its own email address. This is the first step towards enabling your Instinct to own and run its own accounts. Most everyday tasks flow through your email: creating accounts, confirming bookings, contacting businesses, and following up when things need attention. With its own email, Instinct can send and receive emails without cluttering your inbox. For example, Instinct can use its own email to contact a restaurant about a special request, ask a business about availability, or sign up for a service it needs to complete your task. You can get started by claiming an email address for your Instinct at http://mail.instinct.com. If you were a very early user, we went ahead and reserved a preferential email address for you. Your Instinct will tell you what reserved for you 🙂.
0:30 videoNoah Shinn Answering the user whose Instinct described a stranger's financial document and then explained that a photo had crossed into his thread, the founder says it was a hallucination in which the model fabricated a proper noun and its own thinking trace amplified it: not a breach, no user data shared, no isolation boundary crossed. He describes the partitioning as isolated sandboxes, short-lived local credentials and identity-signed tool execution, and says that in the 48 hours since, the company built a hallucination detection layer that scans and verifies every token through the platform, run by small models trained to catch ungrounded claims and able to intercept a thinking trace or a tool call before it runs. A deeper write-up is promised in the coming weeks.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-23
This instance was caused by a hallucination (the model fabricated a proper noun) that was further amplified by its causal thinking trace. This was not a data breach, no user data was shared, and no user isolation boundary was violated. Our users place a lot of trust in Instinct to keep their data private and secure. We've done a lot of work to make sure that users’ data are truly partitioned, from isolated sandboxes to short-lived local credentials to identity-signed tool execution. Regarding hallucination prevention: We worked over the last 48 hours to build an active hallucination detection system that now scans and verifies every token that flows through the platform. This layer is powered by small models that are trained to predict and detect hallucinations caused by ungrounded claims, creative brainstorming in thinking traces, or rare random sampling errors. Our systems are adversarially trained and battle-tested by world-class agent exploitation security teams to ensure that they can detect very subtle and nuanced hallucination cases. This layer has the ability to steer or intercept Instinct from proceeding with the next thinking trace or tool call execution before it is generated or executed. In the coming weeks, we’ll share a deeper dive into how we’re building a proactive engine to protect Instinct from hallucinations. We take every opportunity to learn and create, and we’re excited by the performance and potential for this line of work. These models are going to continue to be hardened every day through continuous testing, sampling, and creative adversarial training.
Noah Shinn Instinct's founder announces Files: private or public interactive pages the agent builds when a job calls for one, to compare options, work through a plan or share what it has put together, and which can be shared with anyone who has the link, including people who do not use Instinct. His examples are an apartment comparison with photos and commute times, a gallery crawl, a dinner for eight with recipes scaled and a shopping list, a weekend itinerary, and group trip expenses with who owes what. Rolling out to all users the same day.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-18
Shareable files in Instinct Starting today, your Instinct can create shareable Files: private or public interactive pages that you can share with others. Whenever it’s appropriate, Instinct will create a File to help you compare options, work through a plan, or share what you’ve put together. For example: - Apartment hunting: compare places you’ve saved or toured, with photos, floor plans, rent, commute times, and your notes in one place. - Art gallery crawl: a route through exhibitions that match your interests, with opening hours, background on the artists, and a few cafes to stop by along the way. - Dinner with friends: a guest list, recipes scaled for eight, and an ingredient list you can check off as you go. - A weekend away: an itinerary built around your arrival time, with places to visit and details you can open along the way. - Group trip expenses: enter shared costs, choose who participated, and see who owes what. You can keep a File private or share it with anyone who has the link, including people who don’t use Instinct. Files are rolling to all Instinct users today. To get started, you can ask your Instinct to do the research for your next trip.
0:42 videoNoah Shinn Instinct's founder announces Concierge: a white-glove service for the high-touch cases, phone calls, high-end bookings, the restaurant that takes no online reservations, a dentist's cancellation list, a cable bill to sort out. Rolling out to the early-access group first, with wider access to follow.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-16
Your Instinct can now handle phone calls. Introducing Instinct Concierge – a white glove service meant to handle high-touch cases, such as making phone calls, high-end service booking, and more. You’ll be able to book the restaurant that doesn’t take online reservations, get on your dentist’s cancellation list, or have that cable bill sorted out. We’re slowly rolling this out to our early access group today and will be expanding access soon.
0:21 videoNoah Shinn Instinct's founder announces authenticator support: the agent can enrol as a TOTP authenticator on an account, save the key in its Vault beside the password, and generate the six-digit codes itself to get past a two-factor prompt without stopping the task. The post says 37% of users store at least one password in Vault within three weeks, that phone approvals may still need the user, and that it is live for everyone.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-11
Authenticator support in Instinct Instinct can now securely and seamlessly handle the “enter your 6-digit authenticator code” step for you. It uses the same time-based one-time password (TOTP) standard as Authy, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and other popular authenticator platforms. Once an account’s authenticator is set up in Vault, your agent can generate and enter its verification codes to unblock itself on your task. 37% of users store at least one account password in Vault within their first three weeks. A lot of everyday work happens behind a login. However, even with your password saved, an authenticator prompt can mean stopping the task, opening an app on your phone, and sending over a code before it expires. Instinct can now handle that step and keep working. On supported services, Instinct can complete the enrollment and save the details alongside your login in Vault. You may need to approve the initial sign-in or an existing security check. Where a service allows an additional authenticator, you can keep using the one on your phone. Once setup is complete, Instinct can use its own saved key to generate codes for future sign-ins. Phone approvals and other security checks may still need your input. Authenticator support is another step toward giving Instinct the tools it needs to complete tasks on your behalf in the real world, with fewer interruptions along the way. This is available across all of our users today.
0:30 videoNoah Shinn Instinct's founder announced a Trusted Person network and an Instinct-to-Instinct protocol: one person's agent can now talk to another person's agent to settle plans between them, finding a time, working out details and following up when things change. He gives coordinating with a spouse, planning a trip with friends, scheduling with colleagues and running recurring plans as the cases, and says an agent will only reach agents belonging to people in that trusted circle.
Noah Shinn
@noahrshinn · 2026-09-09
Introducing our Trusted Person network powered by our new Instinct-to-Instinct communication protocol. Your Instinct can now talk to other Instincts to coordinate plans on your behalf. Getting people together often involves a lot of back-and-forth: finding a time, working out the details, and following up when plans change. Instincts can now work with each other to help handle that coordination. For example: - Coordinating plans with your spouse - Planning a weekend trip with friends, including dates and arrival times - Scheduling time with colleagues and other collaborators - Hosting events with 10s or 100s of people - Organizing recurring plans like tennis, book clubs, or weekly dinners Disclaimer: Your Instinct will only be able to communicate with those in your Trusted Person network. This is the group of people who are closest to you: - Spouse - Older children and parents - Colleagues and trusted professional relationships - Small local businesses The Trusted Person network is currently available to our early access group and will be slowly rolled out across the user base over the next 24-48 hours.
0:32 video