Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Instinct vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

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

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.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where ZeroClaw loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

ZeroClaw BB

Best for One person who wants an assistant on their own hardware that answers on Telegram, Discord, Matrix or email, asks before it writes or runs commands, and works with a local model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 74 against 5
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 3
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 5
  • Security & auth, 76 against 25
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 64 against 51

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The docs state that command execution is not audited. [security.audit] records certificate events only, and tool receipts are opt-in and not durable

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInstinctZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%20574ZeroClaw +69
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2382ZeroClaw +79
Agent ergonomics13%16.2572ZeroClaw +67
Security & auth14%17.52576ZeroClaw +51
Payments & pricing10%12.5060ZeroClaw +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8380ZeroClaw +77
Transparency & trust7%8.85164ZeroClaw +13
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 11.4/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Instinct's Terms of Service, which grant personal use onlyMIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2026-09-05
Terms last updated2026-08-26no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-26no document linked
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
Popularitynone33k stars

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.

ZeroClaw

Supervised autonomy is the default, so tools outside a short read-only list wait for the owner's approval, and secrets are encrypted in the config file. The docs state that command execution is not written to an audit log, and the project publishes no privacy policy or terms.

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

ZeroClaw

  1. Keep [risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised". full runs every tool not listed in always_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too
  2. Add sending and account tools such as send_via, google_workspace and http_request to always_ask so a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt
  3. List senders in [peer_groups.<name>] external_peers. ["*"] accepts anyone on that channel
  4. Set [web_fetch].allowed_domains and [http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress
  5. Run one-shot tasks with zeroclaw agent -a <alias> -m "<task>". A cron or webhook turn has no prompt, so shell calls fall to the command policy

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Instinct and ZeroClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Instinct. ZeroClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Instinct or ZeroClaw

Machine-readable

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