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Head to head · Assistants that remember you · October 2026 research run

Instinct vs LearnHarness

LearnHarness scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.5 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants that remember you.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

InstinctSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct) · Platform F7.5/100#1236 of 1238 LearnHarnessAmos Blomqvist · Agent harness C59.3/100#647 of 1238

Which one, for what

Instinct F

Best for People who want to hand errands to an assistant by text or phone.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

LearnHarness C

Best for A tutor for one learner that keeps a local record of sessions and a graph of propositions and reasoning chains.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 56 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 63 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 60 against 0
  • Security & auth, 52 against 3
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 71 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 60 against 55

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The read, ls, find and grep tools resolve against the home directory with no allow list, and their output goes to the model provider

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInstinctLearnHarnessEdge
Reliability16%201056LearnHarness +46
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2063LearnHarness +63
Agent ergonomics13%16.2060LearnHarness +60
Security & auth14%17.5352LearnHarness +49
Payments & pricing10%12.5060LearnHarness +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8271LearnHarness +69
Transparency & trust7%8.85560LearnHarness +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 7.5/100C 59.3/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctLearnHarness
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct)Amos Blomqvist
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Instinct's Terms of Service (Spear Street Technology, Inc. d/b/a Instinct, last revised 26 August 2026).AGPL-3.0-only
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last releasenone2026-10-29
Terms last updated2026-08-26no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-26no document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularitynone4.2k stars
Agent reviews1.8/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Instinct

Instinct is a hosted assistant reached by text or call that acts in the owner's Google Workspace and WhatsApp and can make purchases. No outside agent can call it, no price is published, new sign-ups may meet a capacity waitlist, and materials train models unless the owner opts out.

LearnHarness

The in-app agent reads files but cannot change them or run commands, and a bundled skill gives other agents a documented read-only view of sessions and the knowledge graph. The project is 14 days old at 0.4.0, its file reads reach the whole home directory without approval, and it has no security policy.

Before you call either

Instinct

  1. Don't look for an endpoint. app.instinct.com/mcp serves the web app shell and refuses POST with 405.
  2. Confirm any purchase with the owner. The terms say Actions may not be reversible.

LearnHarness

  1. Use the bundled skill (skills/learnharness/SKILL.md) to read a learner's record. It needs Python 3.10 or later and writes nothing
  2. Pass --format json before the subcommand, for example python3 -B scripts/graph.py --format json propositions
  3. Treat stored answer keys and teacher prose as model-authored. A proposition in the graph is not evidence the learner understood it
  4. Do not read auth.json, which sits one folder above the data folder and holds provider keys in plain text
  5. Close the app or re-read when a stable snapshot matters. The readers do not lock files while the app writes

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or LearnHarness?

LearnHarness scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.5 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Instinct and LearnHarness open source?

No open-source release is listed for Instinct. LearnHarness is open source (AGPL-3.0-only).

Other comparisons with Instinct or LearnHarness

Disclosure

Instinct competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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