Terms revision: August 26, 2026 · Last verified: October 4, 2026 (homepage, Terms and Privacy Policy re-read at instinct.com) · We re-check this page when the terms change.
What Is Instinct AI?
Instinct is the assistant people keep describing in the wrong category. It is not a chatbot you open — there is no app to open. It texts you. This page is the plain definition: what it is, what it can reach, who builds it, and where the documents draw the line.
The short answer
Instinct is a personal AI agent built by Spear Street Technology, Inc. that does tasks for you across the apps and devices you connect — and you reach it by text or phone call. It has been invite-based since launch, it is free as of September 30, 2026, and its own privacy policy is unusually explicit about how much it can see.
The company’s own one-line description, from the top of its homepage:
“Instinct is a personal assistant that understands what you’re working on and what’s important to you. It connects to your applications and devices - email, messaging, screen, audio, location, and more.” instinct.com (homepage) — accessed Oct 4, 2026
| What it is | A text-first personal AI agent that acts across connected apps |
|---|---|
| Made by | Spear Street Technology, Inc., doing business as Instinct (San Francisco) |
| Founded by | Noah Shinn |
| Access | Invite-based — no public signup form |
| Cost | Free as of Sep 30, 2026; no pricing page exists; terms reserve changes |
What it actually does
Three sentences from the homepage cover the whole product better than most coverage does.
It works through interfaces that already exist. Not a new app to learn:
“The interface is simple: there are no new interfaces. It’s trained to use a phone and a computer. You can text or call it. It uses its devices in the same way that humans do.” instinct.com (homepage) — accessed Oct 4, 2026
It acts, rather than answers. The company’s own examples:
“Instinct’s core model is trained to understand and handle the deeply personal nuances of everyday life - following up on threads you’ve dropped, proactively calling or texting you, arranging a ride to the airport, booking a handyman for your apartment, and much more.” instinct.com (homepage) — accessed Oct 4, 2026
And the privacy policy describes the mechanism in one clause — worth reading slowly, because it separates Instinct from a chat assistant:
“The personal assistant thinks, plans, and acts to help you complete your everyday tasks.” Privacy Policy — rev. Aug 26, 2026
That third verb is the whole difference. A chat assistant produces text; an agent takes actions, and actions have consequences the terms spend a lot of space on. We cover those on our safety page, clause by clause →.
How it differs from a chat assistant
Three differences that hold up against the documents:
1 · It reaches across apps, not just across topics.
Ordering, booking, monitoring a price on a schedule, chasing a follow-up over days. This is the part early testers actually kept using — our hub has the four uses from the most detailed public hands-on log.
2 · It remembers across days.
The canonical example in every hands-on account is the thing that survives a session boundary: it starts a task, holds state, and picks it back up. That is structurally what chat assistants do not do.
3 · You don’t open it.
You text it, and it can text first — “proactively calling or texting you” is the company’s own wording, not a reviewer’s flourish. Any product that initiates contact has a different relationship with your attention than one that waits.
Where it stops is covered on the hub — the honest paragraph there, from a 25-day test, is worth reading before you decide anything. Instinct AI, explained — the hub →
What it can reach
This is where the privacy policy stops being boilerplate. It lists the access plainly, and the list is the reason our safety page exists.
Messages and email bodies:
“This may include the content of messages, emails, or other private communications or materials that you choose to make accessible to the personal assistant.” Privacy Policy → Information collected through your use of the Services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Third-party credentials and payment information:
“…you may provide your payment information to the personal assistant so it can book rides on your behalf or your username and password for third-party accounts so that the personal assistant can sign into these accounts on your behalf.” Privacy Policy → Information collected through your use of the Services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Health information, if you point it there:
“Or, for instance, you may use the personal assistant to process health-related information, for example, when the personal assistant books a medical appointment for you or summarizes an email received from a healthcare provider.” Privacy Policy → Information collected through your use of the Services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Audio, location, and how you type.
Audio and voice data — “should you choose to enable these features” — plus precise geolocation — “should you choose to share it” — and clickstream data (“keystrokes, clicks, cursor positions”).
Two things make this list less alarming than it reads, and both are in the document rather than our reading of it. Every item is permission-gated — the policy’s own framing is “depending on the permissions you grant.” And one connection path is treated differently from the rest: Google Workspace data is explicitly excluded from model training and ads, and not shared with third-party AI providers. That carve-out is the single most useful fact on this page for anyone deciding how to set it up.
Privacy Policy → Information collected through your use of the Services — rev. Aug 26, 2026 · Privacy Policy → Information collected from Google Workspace — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Who makes it
The company is Spear Street Technology, Inc., doing business as Instinct. That identification comes from the first sentence of its own privacy policy, which is the most authoritative place to get it:
“This Privacy Policy describes how Spear Street Technology, Inc. d/b/a Instinct (“we”, “us”, “our”) collects, uses and discloses information about you…” Privacy Policy — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Its terms place its legal home in San Francisco, California — the arbitration clause names the courts there.
The founder is Noah Shinn (per his LinkedIn profile and TechCrunch’s August 24, 2026 report). His background, in his own words:
“I am a programmer and researcher. Previously, I was a researcher at Sierra, where I joined as one of the first employees.” noahshinn.com — accessed Oct 4, 2026
He also lists earlier work in Northeastern University’s Programming Language Group, and he is the first author of “Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning” (NeurIPS 2023) — a useful clue to why this product is built the way it is.
The funding, with the number confusion cleared up. Two figures circulate and they are not contradictory — they are two rounds, a month apart:
$1B Series C at a $10B valuation
Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue participating — announced September 28, 2026 (per Reuters and Yahoo Finance, same-day coverage).
$250M Series B at a $2.5B valuation
Led by Index Ventures and Benchmark — disclosed by the company itself in late August 2026: The Wall Street Journal reported it, TechCrunch’s August 24 story was updated with it, and Reuters noted the round again on September 28.
Any page quoting only one of the two is either behind or ahead. Both are dated.
How you get in, and what it costs
Access is invite-based. There is no public signup form we could find, and the only entry point the company’s own homepage links to is app.instinct.com/login, under the button “Text Instinct to get started.”
It is free — for now, with a date. As of September 30, 2026, Instinct is free for everyone with access (per usecarly’s dated pricing guide). And when we checked the official site ourselves on October 4, 2026, instinct.com/pricing wasn’t there at all — the URL shows “This page could not be found.”
The Terms are where the future is disclosed, and they are candid about it:
“You may be required to pay us fees to access or use certain features of our Services.” Terms of Service → 4. Paid services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
“The Company may, at any time, revise or change the pricing for the Services, or any portion thereof.” Terms of Service → 4. Paid services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Terms of Service → 4. Paid services — rev. Aug 26, 2026 · instinct.com/pricing — checked Oct 4, 2026
So the accurate sentence is: free today, priced by contract tomorrow. Free is a fact with a date, not a promise.
The full check — both angles of the pricing URL, the paid-services clauses verbatim, and what a $0 plan caps your protection at: Is Instinct AI free? — the dated checks →
The setup path — the settings that matter, the training opt-out, disconnect versus delete — is on its own page, because none of it is guessable: How to Use Instinct AI →
What it isn’t
Four boundaries the documents draw themselves:
It isn’t a professional advisor.
The privacy policy says so directly: “the Services and the personal assistant are not a professional advisor, so you should not rely on it for actions requiring financial, legal, medical, or other advice or judgment.”
It isn’t a general-availability product.
Invite-only as of October 2026. Invites are the gate, and community threads asking for codes outnumber anyone handing them out.
It isn’t the same as the other agents it gets compared to.
OpenClaw, Hermes, Tasklet and GrokBot are separate products that early users name in the same breath — our hub covers how the comparison actually went.
It isn’t a product with a manual.
There is no published walkthrough from the company. Everything our pages state is quoted from the Terms and the privacy policy and dated to their August 26, 2026 revision — we don’t have an account, and we don’t invent screens.
Privacy Policy — rev. Aug 26, 2026 · Terms of Service → 3. Using the services — rev. Aug 26, 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is Instinct AI in one sentence?
A text-first personal AI agent from Spear Street Technology that carries out tasks across the apps you connect, rather than answering questions in a chat window.
Who makes Instinct AI?
Spear Street Technology, Inc., doing business as Instinct — a San Francisco company founded by Noah Shinn, who previously worked as a researcher at Sierra. In late September 2026 it announced a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation.
How much does Instinct AI cost?
Nothing as of September 30, 2026 — it is free for everyone with access, and no pricing page exists. The Terms do reserve the right to charge for “certain features” and to change pricing “at any time,” so treat free as current, not permanent.
Do I need an invite?
Yes. There is no public signup; the only entry point the company links to is app.instinct.com/login. We found no official page that issues codes.
What does it connect to?
Google Workspace (Calendar, Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Tasks), other third-party services you authorize, and — depending on permissions — your messages, email bodies, audio, location and payment information. The privacy policy lists all of it.
Is it safe?
That question deserves its own page, and it has one — the clause-by-clause safety check. The short version: broad access, default-on training, binding agent authority — all disclosed, none of it hidden.
Sources
- Instinct homepage accessed Oct 4, 2026 · the one-line self-description, the interface sentence, and the use-case examples · (instinct.com/about is an empty shell — no about-page content exists to cite)
- Instinct Terms of Service, as revised August 26, 2026 the paid-services and venue clauses (§4, §10)
- Instinct Privacy Policy, as revised August 26, 2026 the company identification, the access list, the permission gating and the not-an-advisor clause (unnumbered — cited by heading name)
- noahshinn.com — About accessed Oct 4, 2026 · the founder’s own background, verbatim · that page was last updated 08/2025 and does not mention Instinct — his role is attested by his LinkedIn profile (“Founder, Instinct”) and TechCrunch’s August 24, 2026 report
- “Instinct’s powerful AI assistant is raising privacy and security concerns” — Sarah Perez, TechCrunch August 24, 2026 (updated with funding news after publication) · the founder identification (“Created by a small team led by … Noah Shinn”) and the Series B disclosure the company gave The WSJ
- “AI agent firm Instinct raises $1 billion in latest funding round” — Reuters September 28, 2026 · the $1B Series C at a $10B valuation, and the $250M Series B that preceded it
- “Instinct AI Pricing (2026): Free for Now, and Paid How?” — usecarly the September 30, 2026 free-tier reading — a dated third-party check, not an Instinct document
Every quotation on this page traces to one of these sources, with its date. Anything not quoted is our description, and says so.