Instinct vs Poke: which AI assistant to text
The comparison people make when they ask why Instinct and not Poke, a year earlier, with most of the same rows. The axis is what each is allowed to do before asking: Poke texts you first and waits; Instinct acts first, holds the password to do it, and is criticised for exactly that.
Instinct is for
Anyone who wants the work finished without being asked, on iMessage or by phone, and will hand over the access that takes.
Poke is for
Anyone who wants the sanctioned route into Messages, a published price, and WhatsApp or Telegram as well, from a product that now belongs to Cognition.
A general agent that acts before asking, and is criticised for exactly that
- Posted doing a job
- 23
- public posts, each on the listing
- 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
The first independent third-party agent approved on Apple Messages for Business
- Posted doing a job
- 0
- public posts, each on the listing
- Of those, went wrong
- 0
- nothing posted yet
- Posts for it, against it
- 0 / 0
- nothing posted yet
Instinct and Poke, side by side
They differ on getting in, price, trust and who runs it; a dot marks each row where they do.
| Instinct | Poke | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting in | ||
| Where do you text it? | iMessage, Voice. | iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram. |
| How do you start? | Invite only. | Create an account. |
| Does it work on Android? | No; iMessage only. | Yes, over WhatsApp, Telegram. |
| Is there an app to install? | Optional app: an app exists but is not how you start. | Optional app: an app exists but is not how you start. |
| Who starts the conversation? | Acts without asking. | Messages you first. |
| Price | ||
| What does it cost? | Not published. | Free to start, with paid tiers. |
| Trust | ||
| Does it train on my messages? | Yes, with opt-out. | Yes, with opt-out. |
| What does it hold to log in for me? | Holds your password for connected accounts; no security contact published. | Holds what it does not say; no security contact published. |
| What happens to my messages? | Who carries them is not published. | Carried by Linq. |
| Does it publish about its security? | Nothing published. | Nothing published. |
| Can it phone people? | It calls; who speaks is not stated. | It does not call. |
| Who runs it | ||
| Who is behind it? | Spear Street Technology, Inc., San Francisco; funded. | The Interaction Company of California, acquired by Cognition, Palo Alto; funded. |
| How is it funded? | $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. | $25M total: a $15M seed led by General Catalyst at a reported $100M valuation on launch day, then $10M in April 2026 co-led by Spark Capital and General Catalyst at a $300M post-money valuation. Acquired by Cognition in July 2026 for an undisclosed sum. |
| What it can do, on its own pages | ||
| Bookings and reservations | Yes | Not stated |
| Phone calls | Yes | Not stated |
| Calls people for you | Yes | Not stated |
| Payments | Yes | Not stated |
| Documents | Yes | Not stated |
| Persistent memory | Yes | Not stated |
| Talks to other people's agents | Yes | Not stated |
| Reminders | Not stated | Yes |
| Both | Email, Calendar and scheduling, Travel, Task management, Web research. | |
What people got Instinct and Poke to do
23 public posts of either agent doing a specific thing for somebody, counted by the job; each is on the listing with the post behind it.
| Job | Instinct | Poke |
|---|---|---|
| Something you are owed | 8 | 0 |
| Research | 6 | 0 |
| Booking | 4 | 0 |
| Reminders and follow-up | 2 | 0 |
| Group coordination | 1 | 0 |
| Your inbox | 1 | 0 |
| Buying | 1 | 0 |
Instinct
What people say Instinct and Poke saved or got back
Every dollar figure somebody attached to a post about either agent. The figures are theirs, unverified, and never added up here.
Instinct
Poke
- $2,182got backunclaimed property owed to him, claims filedInstinct
- $245.46got backa Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement paid as a virtual Visa, issued in May and never activatedInstinct
- $120saveda year off a Verizon bill, plus $58 backInstinct
- $54saveda Groupon for a dental checkup, in a backlog of admin clearedInstinct
What separates Instinct and Poke
Poke was first shown in September 2025, launched in March 2026, was the first independent agent Apple approved onto Messages for Business, passed 200 million messages, and was bought by Cognition in July. Instinct went from invite-only waitlist to a $2.5 billion valuation in weeks and $10 billion a month after that, reaches iMessage by a route Apple does not sanction, and is the product people mean when they say the consumer agent started to feel real. On the rows this directory records they are closer than the reaction to them: both are personal assistants in an iMessage thread, both read your email and calendar and book travel, both train on conversations unless you opt out, and neither publishes who carries its messages or where its model runs.
What the fields say is different is small in number and large in kind.
Before asking, or after
Poke's row says it texts you first; Instinct's says it acts first, and the most-cited complaint about it, "it acted without asking me", is the cost of the row. That is the whole of the difference a user feels: one product drafts and waits for a yes, the other returns a confirmation.
What it is handed to do that
Instinct's policy is the only one here that describes being given your username and password for other services so it can sign in as you, and since 11 September it can hold your authenticator as well. Poke's policy, forty-six thousand characters covering all of its parent's brands, does not say what it takes when you connect an account, so the row is blank. The capability that follows is the one Poke's row lacks: payments, which Instinct does through a wallet that hands it a one-time card, and phone calls out.
Who let it in
Poke is on Apple's programme, on a business number, and Cognition says it stays there through 2026. Instinct reaches iMessage by a route Apple does not sanction and publishes no number at all. That is a regulatory fact rather than a feature, and it cuts both ways: the sanctioned product cannot open a conversation you have not opened, though it can text you first once you have, which is what its row records; the unsanctioned one answers to nobody on that.
What it costs and how you start
Poke publishes three tiers, free, $19 and $199, and takes a signup. Instinct publishes no price, takes an invitation, and a user's own estimate of what it is worth to him is on the market wall at five to ten thousand dollars a month. Poke also reaches WhatsApp and Telegram; Instinct's only messaging app is iMessage, and its other way in is a phone call.
What the record holds
The sightings on this site show Instinct doing a specific thing for a named person: talking Verizon down, filing unclaimed-property claims, getting miles for a delay, checking a school portal twice a week, getting a user banned from Resy. None shows Poke doing anything, despite the message count, because the posts that name Poke are about its approval and its acquisition rather than about a chore. The gap between the two products may be persistence, how hard each keeps going before it hands the job back, and this directory has no row for that yet; what it can show is that one product's users post the outcome and the other's posted the milestone.
The thing people ask after "why not Poke" is whether Instinct is OpenClaw for people who will not run a server; that is its own page.
What people say about Instinct and Poke
Instinct
“Unlike ChatGPT, Claude, or Meta, Instinct doesn't send its own user agent or signature.”
“Out of the 456 people who asked for Instinct, only 31 posted about using it in the days that followed.”
“We're still deep in unlocking personal superpowers via AI, long phase of tool before network”
Poke
The same products, against others
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