The Cobbler Appointment Meets the Permissions Problem

What people were saying

Today split cleanly into two conversations that happened to be about the same product. On one side, @rak_garg posted a nine-item accounting of the last fifteen days: a new dentist, an in-network acupuncturist, a cobbler appointment for a pile of things that needed fixing, 6,000 marketing emails deleted, a daily newsletter digest, date nights scheduled against two calendars, vet appointments for the dog's allergy shots, padel bookings the moment they open, and ongoing negotiations with car dealers and private sellers. His summary was that the thing is now his liaison to the American healthcare system, which is either a triumph of agentic software or a comment on American healthcare.

On the other side, @TechCrunch ran a piece noting that early testers rave while also flagging the sweeping access, broad terms, and ability to act on your behalf. Both posts were live within a few hours of each other.

The praise

@PositiveGamma said queries that went to Google a year ago and to Claude last month now go to Instinct, which is pinned at the top of his WhatsApp. @tdesseyn reported swapping out his previous bot setup entirely and said it wasn't close. @ay_ushr made the narrower argument that he's fine handing agents a card as long as the confirmation flow is good, and that he can't think of a use case the existing card rails don't already cover, which quietly undercuts a lot of agentic payment protocol discourse.

@ajwaxman went a different direction: inspired rather than subscribed, he built his own ticket-tracking agent in a couple of hours. @plumberbutt97 framed the whole thing as a preview, arguing Meta's Hatch will be this for a billion people.

The pushback

@startupandrew made the sharpest competitive case: an agent that YOLOs it produces impressive results, an agent you can trust with consequential data is a much harder build. @srcasm, an investor in that company, reframed the day as "cool demos" versus "scary permissions" and asked whether any of this passes a CFO's smell test.

And @mayamshahh took the most deflationary swing of the day, wondering why deleting marketing emails counts as an accomplishment worth tweeting. Fair. It is not that deep.

Notable anecdotes

@saniaio admitted, grudgingly, that iMessage is simply the better mobile agent interface, then offered up a spare invite. A UK reply under Rak's thread attempted the same list locally and got: told to see a dentist for the first time ever, failed to book via the NHS site, found zero padel courts, settled for a football pitch.