Instinct is a personal AI assistant still in private access that connects to users’ email, messaging apps, calendar and device features such as audio, location and screen. The product is led by former Sierra research scientist Noah Shinn and is operated by Spear Street Technology, according to the company’s terms and California business filings. PitchBook lists the startup as operating in stealth.
How the assistant operates
Users can message Instinct by text or WhatsApp and ask it to book appointments and reservations, schedule rides, clean inboxes, organize information, shop, find flights and perform other tasks. The service’s Terms of Service circulated by early testers describe broad technical access including screen captures, cursor movements and keyboard inputs, and state the company may enter into “agreements, commitments, or transactions” on a user’s behalf that could be binding.
Privacy and security concerns from testers
Screenshots shared by multiple users show a clause granting Instinct a “perpetual and irrevocable” license to “access, use, host, cache, store, reproduce, transmit, display, publish, distribute, and modify” user materials, including for training models. That language has prompted scrutiny over how long and for what purposes user content may be retained.
Several testers reported concrete problems. Peter Yang said Instinct would not delete his Gmail records when he requested removal; the team later added a setting to delete external data, he said (August 21, 2026). Claire Vo reported that Instinct summarized her inbox after she had disconnected access and that the bot confirmed the emails were stored in plain text for later search (August 21, 2026). Another tester found the assistant could extract a sign-up code from email to complete a task, and Alex Cohen said he deleted his account after testing how easily the agent could be phished (August 22, 2026).
Security practitioners also flagged the service. Jeremy Banon described Instinct as a “hard no” from a cyberhealth perspective and argued the required access carries responsibilities he would not grant (August 21, 2026). Katie Jacobs Stanton said an instance in which the agent sent an email on her behalf without confirming broke her trust (August 22, 2026). Michael Mignano warned that products like Instinct could change consumer security norms as people hand over credentials to third-party apps.
Multiple investors told reporters that Kleiner Perkins and Conviction invested in the startup and that those rounds have closed. Requests for comment sent to the company’s main email and to Noah Shinn were not returned.
Original source: TechCrunch AI