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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Instinct vs Poke

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

InstinctSpear Street Technology, Inc. · Platform F11.4/100#984 of 986 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 of 986

Which one, for what

Instinct F

Best for A consumer assistant for one adult who wants errands done by text or phone call, such as bill disputes, gifts, groceries, appointments and travel, and who accepts that it acts and spends as their agent.

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

Watch for

No price is published. The terms say fees may apply to certain functions, are charged in US dollars and are non-refundable

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 51 against 5
  • Schema & documentation, 42 against 3
  • Agent ergonomics, 30 against 5
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 31 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 51

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInstinctPokeEdge
Reliability16%20551Poke +46
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2342Poke +39
Agent ergonomics13%16.2530Poke +25
Security & auth14%17.52524Instinct +1
Payments & pricing10%12.5030Poke +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8331Poke +28
Transparency & trust7%8.85158Poke +7
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 11.4/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc.The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Instinct's Terms of Service, which grant personal use onlyProprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-08-262026-03-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-262026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes

Verdicts

Instinct

The terms and privacy policy are specific about connected accounts, model training and the risks of autonomous actions, and security.txt is valid. No price, documentation, status page, changelog or programmatic interface is published, and customer content trains AI models unless the owner opts out.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

Before you call either

Instinct

  1. Do not plan on calling Instinct from a program. No API, MCP server or key was found, and the terms forbid automation software and benchmarking
  2. A person signs in at app.instinct.com with a phone number and a one-time code by text, and may wait for a place when the service is at capacity
  3. Tell the owner to opt out of model training at app.instinct.com/settings before connecting mail or files, since training is on by default
  4. Disconnecting an account does not delete what was indexed from it. Delete that data at app.instinct.com/workspace
  5. Treat purchases and bookings as final. The terms say actions may not be reversible and that confirmation controls are not guaranteed

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or Poke?

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Instinct or Poke

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