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Instinct AI: The AI Assistant for normal people

27m 30s

Instinct AI: The AI Assistant for normal people

This transcript is a detailed review of Instinct.ai, an invite-only personal agent app rumored to be raising money at a $10 billion valuation. The hosts, Greg and Remy, explore how it works, where it shines, and where it falls short. Instinct communicates through iMessage and WhatsApp, leveraging native Apple features like reactions, voice notes, and even playing GamePigeon games. It handles personal assistant tasks such as booking haircuts, restaurant reservations, and arranging a Bali visa on arrival with impressive speed and memory. The onboarding is simple, and a companion workspace lets users manage connectors, payments, and a vault for sensitive data. The invite-only rollout and a planned trusted agent network are highlighted as clever network-effect strategies. However, serious privacy concerns are raised: the app reportedly indexes and retains emails even after disconnection, and its terms and conditions are worrying. The hosts conclude that Instinct is a great mass-market personal agent for non-technical users, filling a gap that more technical tools leave open, but users must weigh its convenience against significant data risks.

Transcription

5477 Words, 27968 Characters

English
Speaker 1Yeah, you've probably heard of Instinct.ai by now. You know, the invite-only personal agent app that's raising money at a rumored $10 billion? Well, what does it look like inside? And what are some use cases? And what are some crazy things that you can do with it? Like, you know, saving money on your phone bills or getting a visa approved in a foreign country with only three messages? Well, today, me and my friend Remy are going to show you the inside of Instinct.ai, the secretive invite-only app. We're going to show you how it works, where it shines, and where it could use a little bit of help. The TLDR is it really does feel like the personal agent app for everyone, including your mom. I've got a few extra invites, so if you like, comment, and subscribe to the channel, I'll give it out to some random people. And I hope someone from Instinct watches this and just piles me with a thousand invites that I can give to everyone. So let's get those likes, comments, and subscribes going, and I'll see you. By the end of the episode. AI with Remy's here. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?
Speaker 2I'm going to give you an overview on the new agent product, Instinct, that has just come out. We're going to go through the good and the bad. I think they've done a lot of things well and some things not so well. So yeah, by the end, you're going to get a full overview on the product as a whole and how you can use it. And you're going to be using it within your life.
Speaker 1So different use cases, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, why it's interesting, why you should pay attention to it or not. 100%. By the end of this, I think what I hope, Remy, is that people just don't understand what Instinct AI is and how to use it, but also just it gets people's creative juices flowing around personal agents in general.
Speaker 2100%. I think there's some cool lessons to be taken to apply to your own business with how the founders, like, rolled it out, how they've been, how they built it with, like, network effects, some cool things like that as well. Cool.
Speaker 1Let's get into it.
Speaker 2Sweet. So I just wanted to touch as well on, like, what I think it did really, really well and then what I think it did really, really poorly. So what I think it did well is the right amount of dialogue, not too verbose, used reactions really, really well and understands them too. Like, I could thumbs up react to messages. It would ask me for approval and I could just thumbs up react and it would take that as a yes. It utilizes Apple iMessage features really, really well. Like, the loud messages, the confetti reactions. It can listen to your voice notes that you send through Apple messages. And this one, this one was, like, genuinely blew my mind. It was, I sent it a GamePigeon game. Greg, do you know GamePigeon? Like, the iMessage games?
Speaker 1I can't say I do.
Speaker 2So...
Speaker 1I feel like I should.
Speaker 2Like, this was a thing, like, back when I was, like, younger. You could send, it was, like, an app called GamePigeon and you can send games. You play games through iMessage with people. So, I sent Instinct this Cup Pong one and sent it off to it. And it came back and started playing the game with me. I was, like, genuinely gobsmacked. We'll see if it does it here.
Speaker 1Waiting for opponent.
Speaker 2Give it, like, a minute. It says it right there. Yeah, straight away. Back on your table. Oh, my God. So, you can see, I was, like, I was playing Cup Pong and it's nailing it.
Speaker 1That's crazy.
Speaker 2Just absolutely cleaned up and then now it was my turn to play back. So, that was, like, a really, really nice touch. Like, I'm trying to, I'm imagining that the Instinct teams would have gone through so much extra dev to get these GamePigeon games to work. They have to have actually coded that. I can't imagine that it's just genuinely doing that. Doing it itself. So, that was super impressive. Memory was cool. So, when I asked it a question in the chat about trying to get my monitor box wrapped, when it filled out the Visa on Arrival card, I noticed that it put in a thing about, like, how many suitcases and it added in, like, the monitor that was being checked into oversize. So, little things like that, I noticed that it would pull things and ideas that I'd said earlier that I'd even forgotten about and pulled them into current conversations. So, it did that really, really well. Productivity, as you saw, it just, like, reaches out. And when I asked it to find me a place I could rent a desk in Bali, it messaged me the next morning and said, by the way, if you wanted it same day, the cutoff is 12. So, order it this morning. Little things like that were really nice. Overall, the simplicity. So, this ties into this one below is, it's basically just OpenClaw or Hermes agent, but for regular people. And I think that Hermes agent and OpenClaw, as great as they are, they keep getting further and further out of reach for normal people because the power users all love them and they need to keep releasing new features to keep up with what they're doing. What the power users want. But every new feature they add to cater to that group moves it further out of reach for a normal person who doesn't really understand agents very well and is trying to use them to take tasks off their plate. So, I think that this is just, like, yeah, they've done it really, really well as, like, a personal assistant agent for, like, mass market general consumers. I think they've done it absolutely flawlessly. And also, too, the use cases, none of them individually are life-changing. They just took, like, 10, 15, 15 minutes off my plate here and there. But add that up and I can see it, like, genuinely being really useful, saving me hours over the course of the week. I also thought, Greg, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, but the invite-only approach that they took, I thought was really, really interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of Clubhouse. Like, the early days of Clubhouse. I'm not familiar with Clubhouse. Oh, man. Oh, man. Remy, Remy, Remy. So, in 2020, there was a, basically, Twitter Spaces app that was invite-only, and you'd go into these, like, rooms, and, like, Naval was speaking, and Elon Musk would be in rooms, and, like, it was, but it was invite-only. And they ended up raising money at, like, I don't know, a $4 billion valuation. And it became this thing that, you know, got really big. That being said, you know, it never lived up to the $4 billion valuation. So, I think the question a lot of people are going to have for this is, is this a Clubhouse moment? Or is Instinct going to live up? It's rumored that it's raising money at a $10 billion valuation right now.
Speaker 2Which is just crazy. That's absolutely insane. So, I don't know. Who knows? But I think the way that they did the invite was pretty clever. Because it made, like, it just, if I had instant access to it, and I probably wouldn't have even signed up because it's just every new post you scroll past on X is introducing X agent, introducing Y agent. It's like, but the way they did it was super secretive and, like, I couldn't get access. As soon as I got a code, it was like, oh, I'm invited. So, they say they're rolling it out like that for compute. But I kind of think that it was a marketing play as well, which is cool. And then, Greg, the trusted person network that they released or are releasing is really, really cool. So, Noah, the founder of Twitch, tweeted this, I think, yesterday, talking about the trusted person network. So, they are basically releasing this feature where you can add other people's instincts as, like, an allow list into your instinct. So, you can have, like, instinct-to-instinct communication, which I think is, like, an incredible example of network effects. If they can get on it early and, like, capture a good portion of the market, I think that that could work really, really well for them.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think, well, when I read this, it really, what really blew my mind is that it's the equivalent of network effects, but for the agentic era. Like, I think, you know, a lot of people weren't thinking about network effects in this way. And I think that, yeah, when you read the tweet, it makes so much sense, right? Of course, you want your agent to coordinate with other agents to get stuff done. And I think a lot of people have questions now around, you know, especially in the startup ideas and just the venture-backed startup world is, like, you know, where are the moats of these companies? And I think you're going to start seeing more and more companies do stuff like this. Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2I mean, it'd be interesting to see if they end up opening it so you can have, like, your muse agents talk to instinct agents or whether they keep it a closed network. I'm really curious to see what, like, what route they go down. But I think this is just, like, a really, really, really cool feature. The other thing was, yeah, super fast computer use. Like, I think a lot of these use cases, you could make an argument that you could do it with GrokBot, but I find that the GrokBot computer use is really, really slow. And I found that Instinct's computer use was just super fast and seamless. You can't even see it. I'm assuming it's using a computer in the back end. And then, like, tying off, I think that it just fills the hole of a personal assistant AI within my stack, like, really, really nicely. I don't really see myself using this for anything business, work, coding related, but just for haircut bookings, like, restaurant bookings, making plans. I think that that's, it's going to be really, really helpful. And notice, too, they also added in, yeah, they also added in this feature where every Instinct now has its own email address. So my Instinct's email address is, like, remy, and my last name, at mail.instinct.com. So now it can use that inbox to sort out bookings and do its, like, PA tasks for you without clocking up your inbox, which I think was really cool. Also, one of the features, as I said, was you can just loop it into an email thread. so if you're in an email thread and like it involves a task that you want instinct to handle you can just kind of forward it the thread and it can be looped in and finish it off for you which
Speaker 1i thought was a really really cool feature too so is your recommendation for business tasks use hermes open clock rock bot and then for personal tasks use instinct yeah that's how i'm that's how
Speaker 2i'm rocking it right now i'm using like i'm loving codex at the moment i think they've done an incredible job so i pretty much keep a lot of my work stuff within split between like codex cloud code rock bot and then this is just fills the hole perfectly for personal assistant ai so yeah that's exactly how i'm using it um one note too on like the the open clone hermes for regular people like i set up a hermes agent for my mom so she could just have a personal agent to use for this kind of stuff but it still involves like i had to set up a vps with like docker and then set it up for her i then had to get her to use composio so she could connect her tools up the gateway crashes here and there and then it needs an update just a pain in the ass and then like i have to manage that too and there's no way that she was going to set that up for herself so i think that this is just i think these simpler agent products for for the mass consumer market um especially like what they've done here and how they've built this they've done it really really well the the stuff they did poorly was i'm not going to put down like some of those issues with ordering food into grads in indonesia to instinctively i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt but i think that security and privacy is something that i've seen as major cons to instinct there's a tweet from claire where she's talking about how she disconnected her bot from google at 11 a.m but got a summary of her emails at 12 so it's obviously indexed them and kept copies of all her emails which is a big concern another one from pd yang as well where he said yeah it's the same thing indexing and retaining all his emails without their permission and people also too i saw in the comments pointed out things too about in instincts terms and conditions they have some really uh concerning things about retaining and keeping control of some of your private data like emails so if that's a big concern for you i think it's definitely something you need to um yeah look into with instinct
Speaker 1i mean yeah of course it's a concern you know what i mean like i think like in an ideal world instinct is by apple and i just have way more trust in apple than a startup just by definition but the reality is apple is not there yet and the reality is this product could save me hours a week and it's the hours a week that of stuff that i hate doing and so it frees up my mind so i can build my own ideas and build other stuff that's actually high leverage so it's one of those things where you know obviously i have no affiliation and you have no affiliation with instinct yeah not at all um but like we we we'd like tools that help
Speaker 2us to make our lives easier yeah yeah 100 uh like this is definitely going to be a tool that i continue to use for sure uh i i can see it definitely fitting into my stack super super nicely so uh as soon as i signed in with instinct it's i can't remember the exact flow but it was you you signed with a phone number and then straight away it kind of got me into imh and then this was like a a message that it fired off as part of its onboarding and that was the first thing that like blew me away is how simple the onboarding was i think that's where a lot of our products lack especially if they're trying to go for like the mass consumer general market the onboarding is not straightforward and clear enough like people underestimate how i'm not going to say like how dumb the average person is but i think that as you know we're in a bubble greg and this stuff's like super simple for us but for people like my mom who's super smart and like other aspects of life uh she would just struggle to understand like basic ai stuff that you and i take for granted so that was the first thing it did super super well is is simple clear onboarding there's no concept of mcp clis markdown files it was just log into the phone number bang you're in and then this oh the first thing as well is it utilizes the native apple i message things really well like uh these little confetti animations it sends you a message like those natively and i've noticed that throughout my entire conversation if there's something like important it'll use like the loud effect and it will make the message go big so i just thought
Speaker 1that was a really really nice touch so it feels it feels human and even i mean we'll get into it later but like when you when you read the text it really does feel like it's a personal assistant
Speaker 2that is a human being yeah yeah 100 uh and then off the rip it's straight away like sends me pictures of like here's some use cases here's what i can do for you and then straight away uh check you into your flight you know ordering food canceling subscriptions um booking movie tickets you know adding stuff to calendar another cool one here i noticed that it shows off you can send voice notes which is cool and then just straight away like i'm running an invite only beta program here's your link i also thought it'd be cool to i'm going to open the platform that goes alongside the the agent view so this is the platform that ships alongside the agent view that we get so just super simple workspace it's like here is your contact methods i've set up both imessage and whatsapp to chat to it on and then connectors i've connected up my email accounts and then slack granola and then link for payments which i'll get into in a minute but i didn't bother connecting up other things like outlook and linear and these other like github and stuff because i like i see this fits really nicely into my stack as a personal assistant agent and i think that they've marketed it quite well as that and like noah in his announcement post was pretty clear he's like focusing on building the best like personal assistant ai product then the next thing i noticed is it's got a vault where you can save in things like logins for different websites uh cards as well which i've given it two credit cards and then addresses that you can save in there as well as well as like phones um and then preferences i some data controls there's a couple of other features as well they've rolled out a trusted instinct agent network which i'll go into later as well but that isn't showing up for me there because they're rolling out these features just to certain users at a time really slow dripping them out so there's a few things that i don't quite have unlocked yet but the the interface is super simple like i can just you know like when i think about this product i'm thinking about like the general everyday consumer i just think about like my mom and how like amazing this would be for for her and her life so i can see people like that just being able to have this bookmarked and then easily just connect out whatever tools they need i can't really see many people needing more than an email and maybe some kind of payment method just for like everyday assistant type tasks so yeah pretty cool this little workspace i think they've done that really well back into the agent session so as you said like i don't know what tasks to give you and it started to flag some and my emails but i didn't really want to go down the work route here flag like things related to my work stuff but i really like clearly had in mind like i see this filling the role of a personal assistant for scheduling like appointments nothing like business or work related or coding related tasks so uh i then had the idea i wanted to i wanted to like get a a wavy perm on my hair because i've like i like dead straight hair so as you can see got it done it looks pretty good so i messaged instinct and i was like can you message this place in bali on whatsapp asking if they do perms and then straight away it couldn't message the the account on whatsapp so it just sort of directed me to do it myself uh which i like first little thing where i felt a little bit of friction and then i asked it to find me places in copenhagen and it went away and like started researching a bunch of spots and then it pulled in reviews and it said want me to check who's got it and i asked it to go and find some photos which it sent me it sent me some more as well down here uh and then i asked it for some more options it just did a bunch of research mainly looking at like reviews and then it i picked one and asked it to check their availability and it tried to book but then uh it ran into the wall of it needed a danish phone number so then it just emailed them uh and then i said yeah please book the saturday spot it it emailed them and then it just said okay great i've emailed them because i couldn't book without a danish phone number and it's like i'll just ping you when they reply and then uh straight away it just said i mean this was like a few hours later it just reached out and i was like confirmed you're booked um i heard back from them which is i wonder if they
Speaker 1they know that an ai agent booked it or do they think it's a human being i think they would have
Speaker 2thought it was a human being i remember i actually i went and looked at the email it sent because i was curious like how the the writing style was and i remember i don't have it up in front of me right now but i remember being pretty impressed with how it wrote it sounded very very human uh so that was the first thing and like to be fair i did a lot more back and forth here than i needed because when i'm trying out new agent products it's like a bit of a teething process in the beginning to try and like feel feel it out and see where it gets stuck and where it doesn't so there are lots of times when because they've made it so simple can't see what the agent's doing or what it's working on. So the time zone would go silent for five minutes I would follow up go like hey did you get that and and it was working away in the background but now I've started to realize that when it just goes silent like it's not broken it's just it's handling it so now I just feel more confident when I just give it a task and I can just put my phone away and not worry and it'll get come back like 10-15 minutes later sometimes so yeah booked me and that was the first task is it is it booked in a haircut which was cool and then I asked it while I was sitting there in the in the haircut chair about booking a restaurant for three so it went in and checked what availabilities are open for Bistro Central and then it pulled in a couple of times and I just said can we book a table for 7.45 and then it says come back it says all stage just needs a card on file for the no-show hold and this was when I was like oh shit I'm getting real we're getting into the uh we're giving the agent a card and it just sent me straight away it sent me a card and I was like oh shit I'm getting a card and it sent me this link to just add in a card like card details and that took me to this page here I mean it no longer works but literally just was an instinct back to that workspace I showed just before but it had a field for name card number um expiring and cv so the way I did this is obviously I'm not completely negligent so I you I use wise for like my banking so I just created a new wise card you can spin up like new digital cards really really easy for like a lot of people and so I spun up a new digital card set a daily spending limit on it for about 500 and because you know it's like the agent goes nuts and if the max it spends is 500 it's not the end of the world for me so um did that and then I just gave it the card details for that daily limited card so then I just kind of felt a little bit more comfortable because like the the blast radius would be contained and then uh straight away here added it and it it reacts to messages quite cool there's sometimes as well like I find it has a really nice balance of knowing uh when to reply and when to just react to stuff so sometimes like it doesn't always give you a reply it'll just react which is I think like a nice touch because I think Greg uh as you know a lot of these models now you're talking to them they're like overly verbose and just like word
Speaker 1vomit back at you so exactly I mean again goes back to being like human you know a human being knows when to react to something and when to react to something and when to react to something and right and I think that's like the big aha moment that people are having with instinct is yeah it just it's scary it's scary human it's like if it's so it's so human it's scary yeah yeah 100%
Speaker 2agree so that was really seamless there that booking was like I was pretty impressed I mean obviously I had to stop to add the card but just straight away check they got a bit availability bang added the card straight away booked it and I had the confirmation email come through so that was that was that was really really cool and then I started just um it added into my calendar and then I asked it again for some more restaurant bookings uh the next night which was cool and then this was this was where I like started to really push the boundaries I I asked it because I was in Copenhagen then heading to Bali for three weeks so I this is the message I sent it right here it was just can you please sort out my Bali visa I'm an Australian citizen uh heading there on this date until the end of and it came back and it did just it gave me a little checklist of everything that it needed and then uh the next thing I did was I asked to sign me up to Emirates Skywards as well because you can get free wi-fi on Emirates flights if you're signed up to Skywards so two like gen generally uh genuinely like useful things off my plate there and and quite risky things with the visa too so sent those off uh came back then it asked for a photo of my passport and I was like which I willingly obliged uh so sent a photo of my passport it said um passport's good and then it says like straight away that also gives me the date of birth for the Skywards sign up which was like cool so it's it's like working on both those tasks for me and then gave me the list of of what else it needed I sent it a photo of me and then um just asked it like you know arriving on the 9th but if my flight gets delayed is that okay and then asked it to find the address um from Airbnb as well so yeah delays no problem anyway moving on it just started to go through getting what it needed from me here we go so here's here's where it had everything it needed and then straight away it sent me my visa on arrival my pdf and I was like pretty pretty blown away by that as soon as I like had what it needed because like there was a bit of back and forth because I hadn't like got my shit together but uh once I had what it needed it sorted the visa out for me one of the questions it asked me for the arrival card it needed to know like what countries I had been in the last three weeks and I was like I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know and it went through my emails and Airbnb receipts and it literally gave me a list it was uh said to me uh I need a list of everybody been in three months here's what I've got so far did I miss anything and it got everything spot on so that was cool and then it uh and when I got to when I got to Bali I was like sweating a little bit because as you know like they they uh they don't mess around with with immigration stuff or you you'll be deported from there pretty quick if you if you get something wrong so I was rocked up to the gate and scan my passport like fingers crossed hoping that everything like that like I placed my trust in instinct to do this for me so I put my passport down and then the gate like we did a little like scanned opened and yeah it was a it
Speaker 1was a cool moment totally that's all it's a lot of trust to put an instinct and I bet you those immigration guards haven't heard about instinct you know it's not like you'd be like I had instinct
Speaker 2to it yeah yeah there was no like there was no uh um yeah pushing the blame onto someone else there
Speaker 1all right well I think that's it um Remy thank you for coming on and breaking it down for us like always I'll I'll include links for where you can follow AI with Remy in the show notes in the description um anything you want to leave people with Remy I think this is a great one to get your
Speaker 2non-technical those people that you have in your life where you are like super in love with using agents and you do everything with agents and and build amazing products and everyone has those people in their life that aren't quite hooked on it yet they haven't had that aha moment and I think the instinct can be the one to give it to them so if you manage to get access I think this is a great one to share and get your non-technical uh people who aren't using agents properly yet get them on
Speaker 1it so send them this episode so they can learn about it and I'll see you in the next one it's still invite only I've got about I think seven invites so if you comment and like this video I'll give it away to some random people um and uh you know I wish I had seven thousand because I feel like we're gonna get a ton of comments and likes but you know hopefully if this gets a ton of likes comments and stuff like that the instinct team will reach out and we'll we'll try to get more uh more invites out so Remy thanks again you're a legend you're a legend Greg thank you for bringing it down and uh I'll see you next time
Speaker 2peace

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Instinct.ai is a secretive invite-only personal agent app reportedly raising funds at a $10 billion valuation.
  2. The app communicates primarily through iMessage and WhatsApp, using native Apple features like reactions, voice notes, and even GamePigeon games.
  3. It excels at personal assistant tasks such as booking haircuts, restaurant reservations, and arranging a Bali visa on arrival.
  4. It features strong memory, proactive follow-ups, fast computer use, a dedicated email address for the agent, and a simple onboarding experience.
  5. A companion workspace allows users to manage connectors, payments, and a vault for logins and card details.
  6. The invite-only rollout and a planned "trusted agent network" for instinct-to-instinct communication are seen as clever network-effect strategies.
  7. Major concerns include security and privacy, with reports that the app indexes and retains emails even after disconnection, plus worrying terms and conditions.
  8. The product is positioned as a mass-market personal agent for non-technical users, filling a gap that tools like Hermes or OpenClaw leave open.

Summary:

ai, an invite-only personal agent app rumored to be raising money at a $10 billion valuation. The hosts, Greg and Remy, explore how it works, where it shines, and where it falls short. Instinct communicates through iMessage and WhatsApp, leveraging native Apple features like reactions, voice notes, and even playing GamePigeon games.

It handles personal assistant tasks such as booking haircuts, restaurant reservations, and arranging a Bali visa on arrival with impressive speed and memory. The onboarding is simple, and a companion workspace lets users manage connectors, payments, and a vault for sensitive data. The invite-only rollout and a planned trusted agent network are highlighted as clever network-effect strategies.

However, serious privacy concerns are raised: the app reportedly indexes and retains emails even after disconnection, and its terms and conditions are worrying. The hosts conclude that Instinct is a great mass-market personal agent for non-technical users, filling a gap that more technical tools leave open, but users must weigh its convenience against significant data risks.

FAQs

Instinct.ai is an invite-only personal agent app that acts like a personal assistant for everyday consumers. It is rumored to be raising money at a $10 billion valuation.

It can book appointments, handle visa applications, order food, cancel subscriptions, and even play iMessage games like Cup Pong. It also uses native iMessage features such as reactions and voice notes.

The main concerns are security and privacy, as it may index and retain your emails and private data without clear permission. Users should review its terms and conditions carefully.

Instinct.ai is designed for non-technical, mass-market users with a simple onboarding process. Other agent tools are more complex and aimed at power users.

It allows you to add other people's Instinct agents to an allow list, enabling instinct-to-instinct communication. This creates network effects for the agentic era.

No, it is primarily recommended for personal assistant tasks like scheduling, bookings, and errands. For business, work, or coding tasks, tools like Codex, Claude, or GrokBot are suggested.

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