Instinct’s valuation went from $2.5B → $10B in roughly a month, and its product design choices are worth noting. Model intelligence is now a must-have for AI assistants, so Instinct competes on judgement.
Most serious AI agents already have Instinct’s must-haves, e.g., memory, the ability to act across your apps, security basics, and of course model quality. People only notice a must-have when it's missing, while a delighter is something they don't ask for but like once they have it.
Instinct's delighters are mostly about how it behaves with people, because it reads social cues and works towards standing goals, like earning your trust and building on it, rather than one task at a time. For example, it has phoned the founder about three times in several months, only about urgent things, so you take its calls seriously. One of their earliest rules was understandability over pure capability.
My favourite delighter is the trusted network, where people you trust connect their Instincts to yours. Your spouse might see everything, while a colleague sees your work calendar. If someone tries to see more than you allowed, your Instinct texts you about it. The product uses the risk of losing someone's trust as a security check.
Instinct doesn't run ads, and the company plans to take a cut of what you buy instead. As a result, the company has no reason to change how Instinct behaves. Ads in an assistant that holds your credit card are what you call a ‘reverse feature’, something that makes people unhappy when they're present.
I am wondering which of Instinct’s delighters turn into must-haves over time for this new cohort of proactive personal agents.