Amex instantly permabanning all the tech bros using Instinct to destroy Resy for everyone else is pretty, pretty, pretty funny

Resy account deactivated with all future reservations canceled because of Instinct bot t.co/d2Fg9v4OEl

I've now had 48 hours with Instinct. My takeway -> the moment everyone predicted just arrived. I ran three hotel bookings, four restaurant reservations, a handful of excursions, and a number of product purchases through Instinct, all through WhatsApp. I left voice notes. It executed. Crazy to think not one new piece of technology was introduced. The genius: it was packaged perfectly into the right interface. I've spent 25 years watching commerce assume a human has to arrive somewhere first. I built Magento on that assumption, from 2007 until eBay acquired it in 2011, when it ran roughly 250,000 merchants and $100B+ in annual GMV. Now I believe that assumption has stopped being true. We've had two years of ChatGPT shopping, Perplexity commerce, agent-to-agent protocols. It went nowhere. I stayed out of investing in the space because I couldn't see the interface that would make it real. It wasn't a model problem. It was a distribution problem, and it was solved the moment the agent appeared of inside WhatsApp. Yes, it's a subtle nuance - but incredibly impactful. The security and privacy questions are real. Handing an agent your card and your address raises exactly the concerns you'd expect. They'll get addressed, the same way every prior wave addressed them after adoption forced the issue, not before. Every serious model provider will ship this within months. First mover advantage never mattered here. The pieces were all there. We were just waiting for someone to plug them in. Wonderful work @noahrshinn

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"

what are the main products in the personal/professional assistant space? more professional - chatgpt work - claude cowork - claude tag - grok bot - manus (and claude code and codex) more personal - town - tomo - instinct - ollie - pallie drafted this 2x2, right axes?

I think this is what’s really going on with Instinct. The product is free, the compute is expensive and $350M from VCs is covering the difference while people get used to handing more of their lives to an agent. That’s the early Uber playbook. Pay for the new behavior until it starts to feel normal. There’s a data play hiding inside it too. Every task teaches Instinct what you meant, where the agent got stuck, how you corrected it and what finally worked. That may end up being more valuable than the task itself. It also explains why all the privacy stuff matters so much. More access makes Instinct more useful, and every task it gets right earns it the next one.

The Instinct situation is the “I told you so” moment for agent infrastructure. We love this industry. We believe deeply in agents. But worship of early demos has gotten completely out of control. Another poor build. Our entire team at @OpheliaAPI has been warning teams and investors about this for months. Giving an LLM a browser, credentials, and direct access to consumer systems is NOT agentic commerce infrastructure. It’s a liability. The BTS here says it all: ~200 API requests/hour, availability sweeps every 10 minutes, and bursts polling every ~400ms. That isn’t some mysterious AI failure. It’s what happens when an agent is given direct access without the infrastructure to govern that access. And now the consequences are hitting users. First sensitive data, now accounts. Sort of reminding me of Phia. This is exactly why the infrastructure layer matters. Agents need identity, scoped permissions, rate controls, provider-aware workflows, caching, transaction boundaries, observability, and auditability between the model and the systems it’s acting on. The model should express the request. Infrastructure should control what actually happens. Shipping autonomous systems into people’s lives without building the infrastructure to control what they can access, how often they can access it, and what they’re authorized to do isn’t innovation. It’s reckless. Because when systems fail, a benchmark doesn’t take the hit. A real person does. Their account. Their money. Their reservations. Their private data. Their trust. This is exactly why we believe infrastructure is the real unlock for agents. Two strikes. Everyday people are paying the price for shipping a demo before building the rails. Broken trust is very hard to repair.

Caught up with @noahrshinn and left with two things: real excitement about where Instinct is headed, and 1000+ invites for you all If you try it, pls share your best use case

things are moving quickly OpenClaw: Jan '26 Claude Cowork: Feb '26 Claude Fable 5: June '26 OpenAI agents breach Hugging Face: July '26 Kimi K3: July '26 Grok Bot: Aug '26 ChatGPT Astra: Sept '26 Instinct: Sept '26

Late to this party, but Instinct is insane. Perhaps we are overbuilding but there is a fat right tail

After using meta glasses to direct Instinct for the past 48 hours, the potential of wearables → personal agents is clear to me Funny how no one has all of the pieces yet: - Meta glasses / airpods = right hardware to direct agents on the go, but Meta AI + Apple Intelligence are horrendous - Instinct = good personal agent, though can only message it via hack-y approaches (‘Hey Meta, message instinct <XYZ>’, while enabling announce messages) - Claude Code with remote control + Tailscale = even more powerful than instinct, though there’s no way to message it flexibly - not to mention using wearables Infinity stones are still out there for the taking

What genuinely happened to Poke and why did they sell? Feels like Instinct is running the same playbook as them which makes me wonder why they sold Poke when they could've raised a crazy round (in place of or competing with Instinct) They had great marketing, a much more viral audience (everyone was talking about Poke), already raised a good round, the list goes on

Today Instinct spent 10 minutes looking up hotel options in NYC just to spit out stale data with prices that do not exist. Recently it’s been slow, can’t complete forms, and seems to have exposed users’ private memories. Trust in AI agents will make or break consumer adoption. Agents will need a memory environment that just works - encrypted, private, auditable. That’s @WalrusProtocol’s agentic storage and access control

Calling it now - some of the great software infrastructure of this decade will emerge from people on the Instinct team. They are dealing with a level of demand and scale that’s rare for a consumer AI app, and that level of entropy paired with the need for super low latency often breeds super innovative approaches to infra. Same thing happened in the early 2000s when companies like Google and Meta dealt with a level of scale that pushed the frontier for a web application, and from those teams emerged: GFS, MapReduce, Bigtable, Spanner, Borg/Kubernetes, Cassandra, React, GraphQL, PyTorch, and so much more.

A big reason I think that products like @agentmail need to exist is they can eventually provide a way for "good citizen agents" to interact with apps like Resy in a well defined manner. For example, identify yourself as an agent, get the appropriate permissions/rate limits, etc, and then act on them. Both Instinct/Resy are great products but we all need to figure out how to identify agents and work with them rather than block them.

Tbh instinct is gonna get my EA fired

I’ve now made 5-10 online purchases across @bot and Instinct (@noahrshinn) so I’m an expert in agentic commerce A few observations: -I mostly want to make agentic payments on trusted platforms right now. Amazon, Shopify store reorders, etc. Everyone (@link @RobinhoodApp etc) wants to be top of wallet for agentic payments…but what if I want to just use the Prime card on file at Amazon? Or just use @shop? Instinct tried to default me to Link, had to tell it to stop -Stripe @link experience generally solid, except for: 1) 15 min timeout on requests is too short, I’m running my agents from my phone and not babysitting them closely, 2) needing to approve every transaction from what I can see (trusted vendor + below trigger amount? Just charge the card -I want my agentic wallet to have all of my credit cards in it, be able to see how many points I have on each, be able to peruse each credit card portal to find deals on travel, etc….interestingly Apple has a pretty good position here with Apple Wallet. Link or Shop Pay could pull this off too… -Firing off a voice note to an agent and seeing a package arrive on your doorstep the next day is pretty wild…something about AI crossing into the physical world that feels meaningful

Instinct is going after Google’s data advantage, one feature after another. First, it was passwords, now location, and that’s after email & calendar. I expect them to acquire Instinct or town by early next years or Google will end up conceding their entire home advantage in consumer internet.

How is it possible that Instinct and @noahrshinn created the best AI agent on/in WhatsApp and not something internally. Where is Hatch? I cannot believe I'm talking to Instinct and not Meta AI. Legacy security and privacy issues holding back $META again?

Playing around with @RobinhoodApp agent cards + Instinct. It found a convoluted way to get a discount on a bassinet that's never on sale, did all the work, I approved the transaction through push notif, and went on with my life. This (and more) can be built today with @raincards scoped cards. Can’t wait to do this with my other favorite cards…

Have been using Instinct with location sharing while traveling in Korea and it’s been a magical experience. My wife and I roughly curated a list of places we wanted to go to and then have been letting Instinct fill in the gaps. Hasn’t disappointed yet. t.co/gVStWihUsY

Finally got my Openclaw + Mac Mini agent with browser use with secure password sharing on par with what I’m seeing anyone do with Instinct once I get a beefier machine, I’ll be able to run better local models as well Feels good owning your data and know exactly how it works

Cool AI use case. I had GPT Astra go through a year of Gmail clothing receipts and returns to build a wardrobe inventory. Then I added photos and answered 10 questions about fit, fabrics and what I wear for different settings. It now knows what works for me and why. The profile lives in a file in my personal “brain.” I can hand it to another AI, like Instinct, and text it like a personal shopper that also watches for deals. My better half is finally relieved of her shopping duties. Also the first credible evidence I can function without her supervision, which was previously very much in doubt. Frontier Ai for the W! (Portability is key. I want my research, health records and everything else I’ve spent time teaching these systems to travel with me.)

a16z GP Anish Acharya reveals his top three personal agent products right now: "The three big products that I love here, Grok Bot totally nailed it, and the model underneath it is awesome. They came out of left field. I know a lot of the good work the Cursor team did." "ChatGPT's Work is kind of buried in the UI, but it's really, really good. It's one of the best products they've released." "And then there's a startup that's really getting some buzz called Instinct, which has made some more aggressive and interesting trade-offs, but all in the same domain."

Instinct gaining this much traction shows PMF for such consumer AI use cases. $META will benefit off this greatly from its near 4 billion distribution of users, this is Zuck's chance to take the consumer AI lead. Upcoming Hatch launch will be an important one t.co/PMaU06XQLL

agi has been achieved internally > set a flight price tracker on instinct > got a pretty great deal today > asked instinct to go ahead with the booking > it fetched my saved card, auto applied all offers and checked out > fetched otp from mail > verified if all gtg and took care of everything e2e

Instinct is a missed opportunity for ChatGPT and Claude both... and many other incumbents. Irrespective of whether its Instinct that makes it or another version of it, both the new and old incumbents missed getting things right for a bit too long.

the first version of chatgpt felt magical poke felt tasteful hermes felt useful instinct feels magical again feels as if we’re entering a new era of consumer agents

unethical startup idea: imagine a service where you can input a dump of your chat messages with a person. the output would be an agent trained on the message style, memories, and humor of said person, which you could then message as if they were that same person. applies to your deceased grandma, ex-gf, or your homie that switched up for a girl. this sounds simple, but the caveat is that this would only work (well) if two functional requirements are met: 1. the model/agent needs to emulate someone’s message patterns so that they sound nearly indistinguishable from the original. as writing models improve, this could get scarily accurate. 2. the memory layer needs to function like a real human’s: some memories are more important than others and memories fade over time. throwing an entire chat context into a file system or vector search will not feel realistic at all. this is something that I think @instinct does very well save this, it’s literally free money

Instinct is literally the best travel partner ever

Been using instinct on @ankitkr0's recommendation for a few days and it is actually very cool as an assistant

How many startups has Astra disrupted? Havey is a startup unicorn focused on legal work. Lawyers are saying Astra has the discernment of a lawyer. Astra can run complex multi-stage workflows. Suppose Astra gets an MPC connector to your phone? Does Instinct or Granola (both apps I use and both unicorns) get disrupted in the fullness of time? I expect we're going to see waves of rapid innovation then crushing disruption of said waves of innovation. What's wild is I am using Grok bot primarily now. Still using Claude Cowork for deliverables, and GPT for reasoning. And, we haven't yet seen Nvidia's open weight models make impact (yet). The switching costs are low. There are moats out there... especially if you have some link to an 'outcome' ... but anything ephemeral will get washed away.

It’s clear we are transitioning from a focus on AI infrastructure to AI apps. Consider: Grok bot, Instinct, Granola. The masses are about to mainline AI. The tip of the spear will be Google Spark: the personal AI assistant we’re all waiting for. (I have cobbled something like that together with Grok Bot and MCP Connectors). Often times you can ignore the ‘Google will build it risk’. Google is focusing their best talent on their top 3 priorities. Personal Assistant AI is one of them. Undoubtedly Apple is studying these new apps as well. And, Meta. It’s possible those firms get acquired at current valuations. But, trying to go after those obvious ideas is not wise. The distribution advantages and data linkages of these large firms are significant. There is plenty to do and build. Finding the non-consensus, less crowded angle, more physical touch points in an age of hyper development is a better path to travel for investors and builders. The ferocity of competition and speed and capital is extremely high... I’m spending more time on defense tech, energy infra, aging & longevity etc and avoiding these hot themes. Those hot themes are where the SV firms have an edge on flow - that’s not the sandbox to play in.

I wanted to look for a discount code for an event. I asked Instinct to check the codes which existed for past events, look at the combinations, and make a guess. It tried 37,100 different codes and found the one which was working. t.co/P35QkwzG3a

@AsideAI is basically the perfect agent harness. If they brought channels to imessages as well then it would be game over for everybody else. It is a one click openclaw and instinct killer if you have your own computer u can leave running at home, and once they set up cloud handoff then it is actually over

can someone invite me to instinct or something similar t.co/OUeT9Wjhpb

Instinct is my E FSD is my Turtle Grok Bots is my Ari ChatGPT voice mode is my Drama The BaDoinkVR-compatible Handy 2 interactive stroker (mounted to the steering wheel) is my hoes t.co/1jOGYnTaTZ

Agents like Instinct give folks a strong advantage with more legacy systems, and that advantage compounds the further out you get from Silicon Valley (slower adoption). Platforms that fail to adjust their offerings in a more agent-native way will be disrupted in the long term. t.co/7GTi3Z1jZb

$META Hatch will succeed here and gain sizable market share. One X account posited that Hatch could end up being the best assistant in the whole space @CamiloBAcosta believes it will flop and I disagree. From the sounds of it, it has capabilities that Instinct simply does not. t.co/Fh0IS4Ivw3

Instinct AI is very fun and good so far

The crazy thing is this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Ts &amp; Cs that Instinct is violating. Instinct users bout to have a real bad time. t.co/QBHFj7mB7S

Prediction: AI agents will cause email marketing effectiveness to decline dramatically. Most consumers have thousands of unread emails from all the marketing emails they get. I’ve been able to setup 3X daily sweeps with Instinct that get rid of anything I don’t need to read or keep like a receipt.

make your website more usable by instinct and every other agent: t.co/bq7GGKBjop t.co/EMO5Ixj0ce

One of the USPs of Amazon and the like is the ease of finding and purchasing. With @bots and @link, the field is getting more level for smaller shops. @Shopify will benefit more from this. I tried @link for the first time on instinct and am now glued to using it for small items like squishy toys for my kid. I still rely on Amazon for expensive items purely for the ease of returns. @jeff_weinstein any plans to make not just payments agent-friendly but other friction points like returns? Maybe auto-generate a mailing label and schedule a pickup.

Just got access to Instinct AI. Still figuring out what all it can do. If you're already using it, what are you using it for?

asked Instinct to look at my bookmarks/likes to see what type of content i like and send me tweets every morning. so far, it’s been pretty good! i look forward to AI being able to curate content for me across all my socials so I can at least enjoy some of it without scrolling endlessly

️ @OfficialLoganK followed @noahrshinn @noahrshinn founded Instinct, the AI assistant that lets users book trips, buy groceries, cancel subscriptions and plan events by text or call. t.co/NHpjW2mqi7

Instinct by @noahrshinn is the closest thing to black magic re: AI personal assistants so far for me - I have about 25-30 heavy workflows running under it, usage limits barely hitting 35% daily - Literally remembers what I told it in my first few messages - Is intuitive and the ability to do things for the benefit of me without me saying so - Connected to every single one of my apps (X, telegram, discord, gmail), not a beat missed with scanning and replying - Able to book stuff, movies, appointments, anything - Actually conversational, no unintelligible Claude speak - Much much more

I've been loving Instinct. There's something so simple and delightful about texting your AI on iMessage.

People are gonna be when they see $META Hatch if they think Instinct is insane… t.co/Dz0E1ZTQlN

I’m extremely pilled but wives got to be separated from agents. I like that my wife doesn’t know what a grok is, thinks instinct is the nature thing, just barely figured out how to use gpt work instead of chatgpt at work Separation of church and state t.co/jGfpNZWxvi

Peter Yang says it feels really weird to hand Instinct an AI agent his two-factor auth codes and his actual Google password, and reveals he would not have done it outside a tutorial "For the purposes of making this tutorial, I went off and provided a code. And the code worked, but Instinct is saying that Google's recovery path ends to a forced password change." "So, then it's asking me to enter my actual Google password in the secure form that it has here that is storing inside a vault." "So, again, because I'm making this tutorial, I decided to just go ahead and enter my password. And then it said that it worked." "And finally, it went off and actually canceled the Ultra auto renewal." "But, it just feels really weird to give an AI agent my two-factor authentication codes and even my Google password." "To be honest with you, I probably wouldn't grant all this if I wasn't trying to make this tutorial to show you how this thing works."