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

Instinct vs Town

Town scores 48.7 (D) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

InstinctSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct) · Platform F7.3/100#1009 of 1010 TownTown.com, Inc. · Platform D48.7/100#834 of 1010

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.

Town D

Best for An owner who wants a mail and calendar assistant whose routines other systems can trigger.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 35 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 33 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 49 against 0
  • Security & auth, 79 against 3
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 60 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 53

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The privacy policy describes training with an opt-out and the trust page says training is opt-in.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInstinctTownEdge
Reliability16%201035Town +25
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2033Town +33
Agent ergonomics13%16.2049Town +49
Security & auth14%17.5379Town +76
Payments & pricing10%12.5030Town +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8260Town +58
Transparency & trust7%8.85363Town +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 7.3/100D 48.7/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctTown
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc. (d/b/a Instinct)Town.com, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
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 Town's Terms of Service (Town.com, Inc., updated 21 July 2026).
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnono
Last releasenone2026-10-10
Terms last updated2026-08-26
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-26
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes

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.

Town

Town is a hosted assistant that works across the owner's mail, calendar and work apps, and other systems can start its routines through per-routine webhooks with rotatable secrets, idempotency keys and documented errors. A caller can't read a run's result. The privacy policy and trust page disagree on whether training is 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.

Town

  1. Start a Town routine with POST to its webhook URL, Authorization Bearer whsec_ secret, and application/json or text/plain. Expect 202 only.
  2. Send X-Town-Idempotency-Key with a stable event id on every retry so Town doesn't start a second run.
  3. Treat 404 as wrong secret, disabled endpoint or missing endpoint alike, and ask the owner to check Routine Settings rather than retrying.
  4. Send account_email only if the owner allowed the override. It must match a connected account in full and can't widen the routine's scope.
  5. Ask the owner to keep routines that act on webhook input in approval-required mode, as Town's own docs advise.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or Town?

Town scores 48.7 (D) on agent readiness against Instinct's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Instinct or Town

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.

Town 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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