The $300 Cancellation and the Liability Question Nobody Can Answer

What people were saying

Two threads dominated, and they were pulling in opposite directions.

The first was operational housekeeping. @noahrshinn posted about a 12 hour window where responses ran 3-5x slower under load, said the bottlenecks were cleared, and dropped a personal invite link while capacity lasted. It did 793 likes, which is a lot for a post that is essentially a status page.

The second was @daniel_li02 reporting that he asked Instinct to look into cancelling a Frontier flight, and it cancelled the Frontier flight. Cost: $300. He asked for a refund publicly, which is one way to file a support ticket.

The pushback

The Daniel thread became the day's actual debate, and most of it was not really about Instinct. It was about who eats the loss when an agent does exactly what it was authorized to do and not at all what you meant. @alaxic framed it cleanly: Daniel, Instinct, or the airline? Nobody knows. Others noted that Visa and Mastercard exist for reasons, that chargebacks and disputes are entirely unsolved here, and that "I checked the terms" and "I satisfied the prerequisites to cancel" should not be the same code path. A meaningful minority told Daniel to write better prompts, which is a philosophy.

Separately, @startupoppa ran the thoughtful skeptic angle across two posts: seamless, yes, but what does it do that Gemini in Gmail doesn't, and what happens when the frontier labs and Apple wander into email, shopping, and calendar? He said he's rooting for it anyway. @CoorsLightCEO asked the same thing less gently (ordering his own DoorDash does not take that long).

The praise

The use cases keep getting weirder and better. @emmzaoui has it negotiating her lease. @TheHolyKau got a bathroom renovation rendered plus samples ordered, a vintage watch sourced from multiple sellers, and a dentist appointment through Bupa. @Prerrrrna_ had it log into her NYT subscription and build a custom crossword book from 1994 onward as a birthday gift. @chowtato got rebooked after a strike and was handed legal recourse for the extra costs. @jasonmok is letting it run his fantasy football draft and talk smack in the chat.

Also @MeghanKReynolds had coffee waiting, and @trevin got his Instinct to hold a conversation with another agent about a Japan itinerary. And @gregpr07 posted a four-step recipe for cloning the whole thing.