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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Instinct vs Skydive

Skydive scores 52.1 (D) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.5 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1245 assistants comparisons

InstinctSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct) · Platform F7.5/100#1242 of 1244 SkydiveCreate, Inc. · Platform D52.1/100#899 of 1244

Which one, for what

Instinct F

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

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Skydive loses 5 points for them

Watch for

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

Skydive D

Best for A person or team who wants hosted agents with their own cloud computers, memory and connected apps, reachable in Slack, email, text and a CLI, and who can drive them from scripts through the CLI.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 41 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 59 against 0
  • Security & auth, 59 against 3
  • Payments & pricing, 35 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 56 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 55

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The API has no operation for sending an agent a task. That runs through the CLI's chat -p, outside the OpenAPI contract.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInstinctSkydiveEdge
Reliability16%201041Skydive +31
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2081Skydive +81
Agent ergonomics13%16.2059Skydive +59
Security & auth14%17.5359Skydive +56
Payments & pricing10%12.5035Skydive +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8256Skydive +54
Transparency & trust7%8.85575Skydive +20
Negative events≤150-5
TotalF 7.5/100D 52.1/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctSkydive
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct)Create, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.skydive.com/v1
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Instinct's Terms of Service (Spear Street Technology, Inc. d/b/a Instinct, last revised 26 August 2026).Closed service under the Skydive Terms of Service (Create, Inc.), effective 29 July 2026. The skydive-cli npm package is published under the MIT licence.
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2026-08-26
Terms last updated2026-08-26couldn't be read
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-26couldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessyescouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingyescouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textcouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waiveryescouldn't be read
Popularitynone5.5k npm/wk
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.

Skydive

Skydive publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 document, Markdown docs and scoped, agent-bound API keys, though outside agents can send it tasks only through the CLI. Its status page records several major incidents, including a 25-hour Agent Hosting outage, and its home and pricing pages say data is never used for training while the privacy policy turns training on by default.

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.

Skydive

  1. Send tasks with skydive chat -p "..." --agent <id> --json and pass --conversation <id> from the JSON to keep context. The REST API can't send a task.
  2. Don't retry chat -p or a create blindly after a timeout. There's no idempotency key, so list agents or keys before retrying.
  3. Ask the owner for an agent-bound use key when you only need to read. Account-level edit keys can create agents and mint keys.
  4. Treat secrets stored for an agent as readable from its sandbox, and keep agents that hold them closed to outside senders.
  5. Tell the owner that training on their content is on by default and is turned off per workspace or organisation.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or Skydive?

Skydive scores 52.1 (D) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.5 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Instinct or Skydive

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.

Skydive 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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