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96 turns · 27 minYeah, 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 gonna 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, uh, and just piles me with 1,000 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. The Startup Grind podcast. It's sippin' time, baby. AI with Remy's here. By the end of this episode, what are people gonna learn?
I'm gonna give you an overview on the new agent product Instinct that has just come out. We're gonna 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 gonna get a full overview on the product as a whole and how you can be using it within your life.
So different use cases, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, uh, why it's interesting, why you should pay, you know, pay attention to it or not.
100%.
By the end of this, people... I think, you know, 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.
100%. 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, um, how they built it with, like, network effects. Some cool things like that as well.
Cool. Let's, let's get into it.
Sweet. 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 it understands them too. Like I could thumbs up react to messages. It would ask me for, for approval, and I could just thumbs up react, and it would take that as a yes. Uh, the... utilizes Apple iMessage features really, really well, like the, 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, I sent it a GamePigeon game. Greg, do you know GamePigeon? Like the, the, um, iMessage games?
I can't say I do.
So you can-
I feel like I should.
You... Like this was a thing, like, back when I was like younger. You could send, it was like a, an app called GamePigeon, and you can send games, play games through iMessage with people. So I sent Instinct,
Episode notes
I sit down with Remy to go through Instinct, the new invite-only personal agent that runs inside iMessage. Remy shares his raw chat history on screen: a haircut booking in Copenhagen, a restaurant reservation, a Bali visa on arrival, and an Emirates Skywards sign-up. We cover the parts that impress us, the points where the agent hits a wall, and the privacy questions that stay open. By the end of this episode you understand what Instinct does today, and you get fresh ideas for personal agents in general.
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
02:08 – Instinct Pros
11:18 – Instinct Cons
13:16 – Simple Onboarding
15:19 – Tools and Connectors
17:43 – Example 1: Booking a Haircut in Copenhagen
20:24 – Example 2: Restaurant Booking and Calendar Entry
23:03 – Example 3: Bali Visa on Arrival and Emirates Skywards
26:00 – Closing Thoughts
Key Points
- Instinct hides the agent complexity behind a phone number and iMessage, so a first-time user starts in seconds.
- Remy gets it to book a haircut, hold a restaurant table, file a Bali visa on arrival, and open an Emirates Skywards account.
- A spend-limited virtual card keeps the blast radius small when the agent pays for things.
- The agent stalls when a task needs a phone app or an Indonesian checkout page.
- Users report that Instinct keeps copies of email after they disconnect Google, so treat privacy as an open risk.
- The trusted