Instinct is my new favourite personal AI agent (here’s why)

0:00Most people are spending hours learning Hermes and OpenClaw, figuring out hardware, models, and memory, all because they want a personal AI that does work for them. But what if it was easy? What if you could have an agent set up inside of iMessage that felt scarily human, [music] actually followed up on things without you asking, and handled real work like a real assistant? All in the space of just 5 minutes. After 4 years of building with AI, even I was surprised at how easy this could be. It's called Instinct. It's a personal AI assistant for everyone. I've just spent an entire week using it. So, in this video, I'll

0:32tell you, is it worth the hype? Since I started using it, Instinct has canceled a subscription costing me over a $100 a month that I didn't even realize I was paying for. It's booked dinners, planned my days, negotiated brand deals, and ordered groceries to my house. Jobs I'd normally have to find time for. I've been handing over with a text or a voice note. I gave it access to my calendar, my email, a payment card, and login it needed. I've been using it 24/7 as my personal assistant, all without leaving iMessage. But the setup process was so simple that I thought I'd actually miss something because all you have to do is

1:03sign up with your phone number, connect to the account that you wanted to work with, and start messaging it. This was actually one of my first messages to Instinct because I thought I'd done something wrong. I'm so used to configuring agents, installing skills, and giving them context that I thought there had to be another step. But

1:17really, I had already done everything. I'd connected my accounts and a minute later, Instinct was finding an email that I had forgotten to reply to. And the first proper test was pretty simple. I asked it to book an Italian place for two people on Friday night, then immediately change that to Saturday. It gave me all of the available times, told me that they were counter seats only, and then I picked 7:00. I also told it to use my personal email address. It came back with all of the booking details and a confirmation number. The nice part is how little explaining I had to do during this entire interaction. I

1:46could change the date halfway through and it just carried on like nothing happened. It even gave the original request a past reaction and the correction a salute. It uses iMessage really, really well. Sometimes it replies, sometimes it just reacts, which is really refreshing when you're used to reading five paragraphs from Claude every time you say something. And underneath that conversation, it's using a booking website to do the job. So you can just ask it for an outcome. It handles the steps on the site, coming

2:11back when it needs a decision from you. Now, it wasn't instant, but it was the fastest computer use that I've ever seen and significantly faster than Claude or Chatbt, even using Astra. That exchange took about 12 minutes from the request to the confirmation. And the useful part was being able to hand over the entire thing, pick a time, and just come back to the result. By the way, this video is not sponsored at all. I have no relationship with Instinct. I've just been using this tool for the past week, and I really like it. It's actually in private beta at the moment, so you can only get in with an invite. And if you

2:41guys want to get access, you can join the newsletter at the link below. And I'll be giving away a few of my extra invites to the people that sign up through this video. But a reservation is an easy one. So I took it up a notch and got instinct to order me Uber Eatats. And for that, I needed to give it my credit card. There's a workspace where you connect your accounts and a vault for login and cards and your addresses and all of those details. But beyond putting this information in once during

3:04setup, I pretty much never go in there. Everything else happens in iMessage. I needed a few essentials, mainly ice cream sandwiches. It's very important work for my new personal AI assistant. It checked the details, made sure that it had the right brands. Then it brought me the total and the delivery details before placing the order. But there was actually an issue. The address in my Uber Eatats account was an Airbnb that I'd stayed at a few weeks ago. And despite Instinct having my address saved in the workspace, it was fully ready to just order this Uber Eatats to this

3:33random address. So I had to correct it. Same with the card as well because despite giving it its own card, it still wanted to use an expired card that I had in my Uber Eatats app. So, I had to correct it again and point it at the Wise card that it already had configured. And this was an issue that I saw with Instinct a few times. Just because I've configured a login or a credit card inside of the vault doesn't mean that the Instinct agent that I'm chatting with knows about it. Sometimes I had to prompt it just to get it to know that that login was there. But once

3:59all of those were sorted, I approved the order and it came back with the confirmation. Now, is it actually that useful to have an agent order you Uber Eatats when you can literally open up Uber Eats on your phone and order it in half the time? No, not at all. But just like a new relationship, I was easing into things, learning to trust my new AI could be responsible when armed with enough information to steal my entire identity. Once I did that though, I actually put it down for a while to do some work. Then, completely on its own, it sent me a list of subscriptions it

4:28had found in my email. unprompted. It went through my entire inbox looking for invoices and then collated a list of all of the tools that I pay for. It sent me a message asking me if I'd like to cancel any, which I did because it turns out that I'd been paying for 11 Labs for

4:41like 3 months because I used it once. Instinct found the receipt, told me it looked like it was still active, and then asked me if I wanted to cancel. Now, I did have to help it out again here with the sign-in, which is a really good example of how sign-ins work with Instinct. Whenever Instinct doesn't have a sign-in for a tool, it just sends you a link directly so you can add those loginins directly into your vault. And after I provided the cancellation reason to 11 Labs, it came back with the confirmation that the subscription had been cancelled. Once I'd seen how proactive it could be, I decided to let

5:10it loose on something a little more high- risk. Every day, my inbox is flooded with brands wanting to sponsor videos on this channel. And I'm pretty selective about who I work with because I only want to promote tools that I genuinely use myself. And because I get so many of these emails, I often just miss deals that actually would be a good fit. So, I thought I'd put Instinct in charge of brand deal negotiations. So, the first thing it did was went through my entire inbox history looking for deals that would be a good fit. It also filters the new inquiries as well, flags anything that looks suspicious, and

5:40brings me the ones that are worth pursuing. It found one that I'd missed from months ago, helped me draft the reply, and took my corrections. Then, I gave it my recent channel stats, and it worked those into the message as well. But, it didn't just stop there. it noticed that I never actually configured the payout details in their portal. So, even if we had done the video together, I couldn't get paid for it, which is an example of just how proactive Instinct can be. It'll often pick up on things that you hadn't even asked for and take care of those as well. And the drafts

6:07were pretty close to what I'd send. There were a few bits that I wanted change, but I could just tell it to remove or reword that section in the same conversation. And I was very clear about the authority that I wanted to give it. It can keep track of the threads, help me work out response and prepare emails, but I wanted to see everything before it sends, and sometimes approving it is as simple as giving it a thumbs up on the draft. It understands the reaction, so I didn't even need to type out a reply. And it wasn't just one deal that it negotiated because now that it's in charge of brand

6:33deals, it follows up with all of them for me as well. That's another ongoing responsibility that I don't really have to worry about anymore cuz it's just handled. The other thing is that Instinct also gets its own email address, so you can forward things directly to the assistant. Personally, I haven't really found a use for that feature yet because I've been messaging it and having it work through my connected inboxes. So, it proved itself pretty handy at keeping on top of my inbox. So, I wanted to point it at my calendar as well. I've actually been using it to time block my day. I tell it

7:00what I need to get done and it puts the blocks into my calendar. Then, it checks in to see how I'm going and when something takes a little bit longer than I expect, I can just tell it to have it move things around in the calendar. I've been using voice notes a lot for this kind of thing. I can talk through what I need, send it over, and then keep the conversation going from there. I can have it manage all of that through the same conversation without going back into my calendar to rearrange everything. But the thing I found really useful is having it coordinate with

7:25other agents. My girlfriend and I have been planning some travel and we've already got a spreadsheet with all the places that we want to go and the things we've booked. I wanted to organize a food tour, so I asked Instinct to find some options. And this one actually took a while. I even ended up saying hello because I wasn't sure what was happening. That's one of the downsides

7:41of keeping everything inside of iMes. You can see when a message is received, but you have no way of tracking the progress of the job because it's all just happening in the background. I just had to get used to giving it some time to finish. When it did come back with some options, we weren't really happy with them cuz they were a little bit touristy. So, I ended up sending it the profile of a guide on Instagram that I'd found. It asked for the tour, the number of people, the time, and contact

8:02details, then submitted the request. Later, when I connected my personal Outlook account, it could find the guide's reply and bring back the confirmation. Then, I asked it to add everything to our trip spreadsheet. It initially used the wrong tab, so I corrected it. And once all of that was sorted, I could send it other places and

8:19just say, "Add this to the sheet." Eventually, I gave it a standing instruction that anything that we booked for the trip goes in there. This is where that memory starts to matter because that context is available across every task that I perform with instinct. So, I can move from a booking to a spreadsheet to planning my day without reexlaining anything because that whole idea of a conversation is gone. And now it's also turned that information into this. This is the files feature. It made a little website for our trip with separate pages for the destinations, the flights we booked, and the things that we're doing along the way. And I can see

8:48this being really useful as a daily itinerary or something. It could send us the plan for the day with the times, booking details, and everything that we need from the sheet so we're not digging through that massive spreadsheet every morning. But I'm not the only person planning this trip. So I wanted to turn Instinct multiplayer and that's where it actually got interesting. And I actually did try literal multiplayer as well. I sent it a link to an online game of Katana and asked it to join. It got into the lobby but couldn't get ready and

9:14eventually the website blocked it. Apparently playing board games with me was asking a little bit too much. But getting our assistants to talk to each other worked much better. Instinct has a trusted persons network which lets your assistant talk to the assistants of people you're connected with. So my girlfriend started using it as well and when we connected our assistants that meant her assistant could ask mine for trip details. The first thing her assistant did was ask mine for our flight itinerary so it could add the flights to her calendar. It specified the details it needed the things like airline, flight number, airports and local times. So I approved that on my

9:47instinct then told it that it could share anything about her holiday with her instinct. And I specifically asked whether it would do this every time without me asking. It said yes within that scope while keeping things like payment details, passwords and passport information out of it. Then I started getting messages saying that she had asked about the restaurant or the food tour and it had shared those details under that permission. So she can ask her assistant and hers can get the information from mine directly. I don't have to go back and forth looking through my emails, sending over details each time. But one of the most

10:16interesting things in this exchange happened when her instinct asked for the actual flight confirmation. Mine pointed out that the PDF could contain a booking reference or other private information and proposed redacting those details before sharing it. I thought that was really cool because it had picked up that sending over the flight times and foring an entire document could expose different information. It did ask me again even though I'd already given it

10:39permission to share the holiday details. So I reminded it of that and the agent agreed that it could redact the private fields and share that document within the permission I'd already given it. Then it came back saying that the redacted PDF couldn't be transferred between the agents directly. So it went and emailed it to her email address. It's been really careful about what it shares in the trusted network and it always keeps me informed when it uses the permission that I've already set for it. So the next time that I booked something, my agent actually told her agent about it and then her agent added it to her calendar completely

11:09automatically. I didn't chase any of it. Now, there are a couple of other features worth mentioning, but I actually haven't had a chance to properly use them yet as they're not rolled out on my account. The Instinct team have announced location sharing and reminders that can trigger when you arrive somewhere or leave an area, so you could ask for a reminder when you get home or have the travel details brought up when you arrive at the airport. And they've announced concurge for things like phone calls and bookings that need someone to call. That roll out has been gradual. And when I asked mine

11:35about making calls, it couldn't do it. And I checked again before filming this video and it still couldn't. So, I can't give you a verdict on that part yet. For the stuff that I've been using it for, yes, I'm going to keep using it. Some of those jobs were small enough that I definitely could have done them myself and pretty quickly. And there were times when it needed an authentication code, picked up the wrong detail, or said something was completed before it had actually completed it. But I kept coming back to using Instinct because of how easy it was to give it another job. I could just send a message or a voice

12:02note, answer the questions that it had for me when I needed to, and then get on with what I was doing. And the most useful parts were the things that continued beyond that first request. Keeping track of a reply, moving the plan when my day changed, or sharing holiday information between our assistants felt genuinely useful to me. I still want my business context, skills, and the work I'm creating inside of my AI operating system I've built because that's where I'm researching, writing scripts, handling clients, and producing these videos. But Instinct has been helping me with the life admin around that work. And I think that's a

12:33pretty useful place for personal AI to be. You shouldn't need to build a whole system every time that you want help with ordinary stuff in your life. And being able to explain the job in a message and have the assistant keep working through it makes it accessible to a lot more people. Once the people around you have their own assistance as well, there's another layer of

12:51coordination that they can help with. Planning holidays together was the first example where that actually clicked for me. So, if you're trying one of these, give it something you've already been putting off. Then look at how much work it actually takes off your plate for you. That's a much better test than asking about what it can do. And if you want to build the AI operating system I use for my business, join the wait list for my next Founder OS boot camp. I'll give you my exact setup and playbooks and teach you how to adapt them to your own work. The links below. Subscribe if

13:17this was useful. Thanks for watching.