Instinct was the buzziest AI agent around — can it survive Muse?

Before there were cute little guys, there was Instinct.

In August, the startup got its AI agent to market with an unusual playbook: invite-only, no marketing, and barely so much as a website. And yet, Instinct quickly became the buzziest thing in AI, garnering praise for its straightforward, text message-based interface and its ability to handle chores like booking DMV appointments and sending follow-up emails.

Then Muse arrived, followed not long after by Dots. The same products, more or less, from two far more powerful companies.

With Big Tech players suddenly in the mix, it was looking dubious that the startup’s buzzy launch could keep it ahead of the competition. But in my own testing, Instinct has held its own against the other two agents, handling online tasks about as well as a robot can. And Instinct’s founder, Noah Shinn, is unfazed by the rising competition.

“AI assistants are all we know,” Shinn tells me over email. While OpenAI and Meta build AI products for a range of customers, Shinn believes Instinct’s focus sets it apart. “We have been solely focused on building a personal assistant for everyday life that just gets it.”

Shinn was an early employee of Sierra — another highly valued startup with a serious Silicon Valley pedigree — before striking out on his own to start Instinct. The quiet release quickly picked up steam with praise from testers and a massive vote of confidence from investors. The company was valued at $10 billion in late September, even after the launch of Muse. There’s no app and no monthly subscription fee (for now). You’ll either need an invitation from a current user or approval from a waitlist. I was approved after just a couple of hours.

Instinct’s AI assistant can do many of the same things I had Muse doing for me, and to some extent OpenAI’s Dots. The kind of life admin tasks like swim lesson sign-ups and appointment confirmations that pile up with alarming frequency in a house of one preschool-age kid and two adults with full-time jobs. These are consumer-friendlier versions of the agents like Codex and OpenClaw that software developers have been using for the past year.

You chat with them much like a chatbot, but they also have access to a virtual machine and can plug into your personal email and calendar. And while Muse’s cuddly bear mascot and Dots’ anthropomorphized blobs feel like obvious attempts to capture a wider consumer audience, Instinct feels markedly different.

Conversations with Instinct’s agent happen over text — either through iMessage, WhatsApp, or email. There is no cute little guy. No pretense that it’s sitting at a laptop, typing away at a keyboard. Just brief responses, the occasional emoji reaction, and a lot more action than talk. It’s as effective as I think we can reasonably expect an AI agent to be right now, but the limitations of a robot getting things done in a human world are just as real.

If you want Instinct to log in to a particular website, you’ll get a link to enter details in a “secure vault,” and you can connect it to different services, including your Google Workspace, Slack, and Notion. But otherwise the interface is just your text messages. It’s kind of genius, and it means Instinct is anywhere you can send and receive texts, like CarPlay or on your watch. It’s just quietly nearby, which is either ideal or creepy, depending on how you feel about AI agents. I thought it was a little bit of both.

Shinn says that the lack of a traditional app interface is a crucial part of what he thinks separates Instinct from the big players. “While AI platforms excel at answering questions and prompts, Instinct seamlessly integrates into people’s lives to turn conversation into action,” he says. “Just like you would text or email your personal assistant, you can do the same with Instinct.”

Instinct didn’t impress me at first. After a couple of introductory messages, it took my Cincinnati area code as an invitation to send me a link to the Enquirer’s website and a set of flight search results between CVG and SFO. Thanks? I told it I no longer live in Cincinnati. “Ha,” it said. “Noted — I’ll keep that in mind from here on.” But after giving it a steady diet of meaty tasks over the past couple of weeks, it has impressed me more often than not, although I don’t think I’m any closer to achieving some kind of productivity nirvana.

I gave Instinct the somewhat vague task of finding swimming lessons for my son — something I’ve been meaning to do for years but always seem to put off. I asked it to find lessons appropriate for his age; it came back with a list of workable results. I suggested the neighborhood community center, and it shifted gears to focus there. I opened a browser and followed along to check against its suggestions. The times and dates it came up with all checked out — one very low hurdle cleared. But it missed a crucial piece of information: The center has a prerequisite class for kids enrolling in preschool-age lessons. I happened to catch this detail, and it highlights a challenge AI agents face: They’re great with a clean set of data, but the internet was made by humans, and often the data sucks. Sometimes a crucial piece of information is hiding in a pop-up window.

Instinct handled a few other tasks well, like emailing my eye doctor’s office to set up an appointment and doing the digital paperwork to start an Ikea return. Beyond just filling in some forms for me, it was surprisingly good at handling vague instructions. I had it search my past Ikea purchases, and it figured out what product I meant by “it’s vertical and white and kind of has these like branches off of it.” (Tjusig, for those keeping score at home).

A few times it surprised me by presenting relevant information that I hadn’t explicitly asked for. I started my request to email the eye doctor by acknowledging that I couldn’t remember the exact name of the office. Instinct narrowed it down based on my description, and later in the conversation it noted that I had a confirmation email from 2024 from the doctor, just to reassure me that I was having it email the correct place. Separately, Instinct also flagged a potential conflict on my calendar while it was doing another chore for me. Filling out forms like a big, fancy autofill machine is one thing, and AI agents are quickly proving to be pretty good at that. But correctly identifying relevant information and bringing it to my attention proactively feels like a real step toward actual help.

Expect to pay for all that in the future. When asked if Instinct would remain free, Shinn responded that “Instinct is free for invite-only users. Our intent is to keep it as affordable as possible.” Avi Greengart, an analyst at Techsponential, notes that a venture-backed startup like Instinct’s primary objective right now is growth. “The business model is grow as quickly as you can to establish something that’s worth paying for,” he says, pointing out that a company like Instinct could be eyeing revenue from its customer base and/or an acquisition by a bigger company.

OpenAI’s Dots are only available to paid subscribers right now, while Meta’s Muse is free to use. “If you’re not paying for it, then the goods and services that you’re seeking may be cutting deals to get access to your agent,” Greengart theorizes. He acknowledges that the current economics are a little wonky as agents are largely being used by early adopters right now, but he thinks the old adage holds true. “If you’re not paying for it directly, then you’re paying for it indirectly,” he says.

That may mean through more advertising in the future, according to Greg Ireland, a senior director at IDC. “The fact that these agents are so transaction, or commerce, or shopping-heavy just makes it a natural fit,” he says. In fact, Instinct has already dabbled in pushing “recommended products” to its users. Companies have plenty of incentives to make that advertising palatable to consumers, but Ireland believes ads will play a role one way or another. “All roads in the consumer market eventually lead to advertising,” he says.