Instinct vs Pally (2026)

Linking Google Workspace gives the assistant Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Tasks, and users can connect other services, hand it a payment method for rides and bookings, or give it account credentials so it can sign in for them. It exchanges data with those services and takes actions on them, purchases included. The errands it handles, from bill disputes and gift orders to groceries and medical appointments, show the range, though the full list of supported services beyond Google is not given.

Sourceinstinct.com/termsread 2026-10-12

Pally connects to Gmail, Outlook and iCloud mail, Google and iCloud calendars, WhatsApp through Linked Devices, iMessage through its Mac app, Slack, Google Drive, Docs and Sheets, Notion, Linear, GitHub, Jira, Todoist, Granola and X, with app authorization handled by Composio and room for custom integrations.

It acts in them, sending WhatsApp and iMessage messages and email, forwarding mail, creating calendar invites and editing a Google Doc in place once the user approves. Sites without an integration are reached through browser errands that sign in with saved logins, and a bank account can be linked read only for recurring charges.

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One assistant thinks, plans and acts across a task, taking an errand such as a weekend getaway or a bill dispute through calls, web steps and connected accounts. The planning happens inside the assistant, with no workflow builder or team of cooperating agents for a user to arrange.

Sourceinstinct.com/privacy-policyread 2026-10-12

Background tasks carry an errand across messages, email, the browser and calls, retry after a brief model error and pick up new choices from the chat while they run. Automations are written in a sentence and can carry conditions, such as nudging a friend who still owes money once three days pass. Through the trusted network, a user's Pally hands parts of a job to the Pallys of a partner, friends or colleagues, each acting under its own owner's sharing choices, and in a group chat each member's request runs on that member's own Pally and accounts.

Sourcepally.com/trusted-networkread 2026-10-12

Work starts when the user texts or calls Instinct, or opens the Mac app or web workspace, and voice requests work once audio features are switched on. The assistant is available when engaged, and nothing in the product sets it working on a schedule, a watched inbox or another event without a request.

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Automations fire the moment something happens, such as an email from a landlord, or on a schedule, and email triggered rules read new Outlook and Gmail messages as they arrive. Morning briefs, alerts on important messages across every connected account, flight day changes and price drop or restock watches arrive unprompted. People reach Pally by text, voice note or a call to its number, and in an iMessage or Telegram group it answers when someone names it or replies to one of its messages.

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The assistant reads what a user makes available, from Drive files, Docs and Sheets to emails and private messages, and Instinct is authorized to copy and index data from connected services so it understands what the user is working on. How that index is kept, and what a user can see of it, is not explained beyond revoking Google access and deleting the Workspace data collected.

Sourceinstinct.com/privacy-policyread 2026-10-12

Connected mail, calendars, chats, Drive files and Notion pages are read when a question needs them, and web research runs through Exa. From each connected inbox Pally also keeps structured records of receipts, order confirmations and renewal notices from about the past 12 months, with merchant, items, amount, date and repeat cycle, alongside recurring charges from a linked bank account. Outside those purchase records, documents are read at request time instead of being indexed into a lasting knowledge store.

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Understanding what matters to its user is the core of the pitch, yet users get no memory they can open, edit or clear, and no account of what the assistant retains between requests.

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Memory is built around people, not files, covering who the user talks to, what they last discussed and what was promised, such as a friend's dietary needs or a deck owed to an investor. Pally tidies it every night, and the user can ask what it remembers, edit it, tell it to forget something, which then stays out after the nightly update, download it or delete the account. Memory is held per user, a group chat's history and memory belong to the group, and both are kept while the account is active.

Sourcepally.com/privacyread 2026-10-12

The user authorizes the assistant to act as it judges responsive to a request, purchases included, and Instinct warns that an autonomous agent can make unintended payments, contact the wrong people or be misled by instructions planted by third parties. Its remedy is to ask users to review what the assistant has done and stay attentive, with no approval step or spending limit built into the product.

Sourceinstinct.com/termsread 2026-10-12

Pally checks with the user before it spends or sends anything not already asked for or approved, and sends on its own only within limits the user sets, such as messages to a named group. A purchase lays out the exact items, seats, fees and total for a single approval, stops if any of them change, and follows the wallet's own approval settings.

Drafts appear before they go and expire after seven days unapproved, approvals can be given by voice during a call, approvals in group chats happen privately in each person's own thread, and the user can take over a live browser session and hand it back.

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Accounts are personal and sign in through Apple, Facebook or Google. The assistant can hold payment details and third party passwords, and Instinct concedes that information sent to it may not be secure in transit. Google Workspace data follows Google's Limited Use rules, and that access can be revoked by asking the agent or disconnecting it. There is no security certification, team administration or single sign on.

Sourceinstinct.com/privacy-policyread 2026-10-12

Each person in the trusted network picks, one capability at a time, what their Pally may share with each circle, starting from just a name and contact card, and in a group chat a personal request never runs on another member's accounts. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest with access limited inside the company, website logins sit in an encrypted vault run by Kernel that Pally itself never sees, and content arriving from outside is treated as information, never as instructions. Pally holds no SOC 2 or ISO certification and offers no team administration or single sign on.

Sourcepally.com/trusted-networkread 2026-10-12

Results come back in the text thread or on the call, and users are asked to review what the assistant has done. They get no activity history or record of the actions taken across connected accounts to review it with.

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Browser errands run with a live view and screenshots the user can watch, paused while a card number is entered, and a stopped session comes back with an accurate account of what happened. Users can ask what changed in their automations, rules and saved preferences, group automations show their latest real results, and recalled activity appears in the user's own time zone. A log of every step and tool call behind a task, ready for export or review, is not part of the product.

Sourcepally.com/changelog.mdread 2026-10-12

The service runs on infrastructure from Instinct's hosting providers and is reached by text, phone, the web and a Mac app. Hosting locations are not given, and there is no region choice or private deployment.

Sourceinstinct.com/termsread 2026-10-12

Everything runs on AWS in the US, with iMessage, RCS, phone and email delivery through US providers and Telegram traffic passing through the UAE. Cloud Mac instances are dedicated macOS machines on AWS in the US. A user cannot choose a region, and there is no private deployment or self hosting.

Sourcepally.com/subprocessorsread 2026-10-12

One general assistant covers every errand. It names jobs it can take on, from bill disputes to grocery orders and doctor's appointments, but offers no catalog of ready made tasks or agents to adopt.

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Ready made recipes start from one message and each does a whole job. They include Inbox triaged, Morning brief, The friendly nag, WhatsApp and iMessage catch up, Flight finder, Flight day, Price drop and restock watch, Buy it for me, Pre meeting briefs, A memory for your people, Receipt keeper, Your Mac from anywhere, Call Pally and Quote hunter. A machine readable catalog lists every guide and recipe entry point with its opening message.

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The assistant runs on AI models Instinct evaluates, fine tunes and trains on user data unless the user opts out, and even then content flagged for safety review can still be used. Neither the models nor their makers are named, and users cannot choose one.

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Pally picks the model for each turn. Most turns route through OpenRouter to hosts that do not train on user data, running Google Gemini, OpenAI and Anthropic Claude models, with open weight models served by Phala, Novita, Together AI, Modal and Baseten for some steps, and OpenAI also handles phone calls, transcription and memory search. A user cannot choose the model, and routines that pass the usage limit keep running on a lighter one.

Sourcepally.com/subprocessorsread 2026-10-12

Text, phone, the web workspace and the Mac app are the only ways in. Other software has no API or MCP server through which to send the assistant work or read what it did.

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Pally runs its own MCP server over streamable HTTP, secured with OAuth 2.1, dynamic client registration and PKCE, and it connects from Claude, ChatGPT in developer mode and Cursor once the user sends a single use code in the Pally chat. It exposes two tools, message_pally to send a message and get the reply and check_pally to collect the result of a long job, under the same approval rules as the chat. There is no public API or SDK for managing tasks, automations, memory or connections directly.

Sourcepally.com/mcpread 2026-10-12

Usage data feeds the evaluation and training of Instinct's own models, which improves the product in general. A user gets no way to test, check or compare how the assistant handles their own tasks before it acts.

Sourceinstinct.com/privacy-policyread 2026-10-12

An automation starts work as soon as it is written, with no test run, quality check or side by side comparison beforehand. Pally reports changes to a user's setup once and explains them on request, which keeps configuration visible without measuring how well the assistant performed.

Sourcepally.com/changelog.mdread 2026-10-12

The assistant uses a phone and a computer the way a person does, signing in to third party accounts with credentials the user provides and completing web errands such as grocery orders and appointment bookings. Whether that happens in a hosted browser, a cloud desktop or on the user's own Mac through the app is not explained.

Sourceinstinct.comread 2026-10-12

Browser errands run in a hosted browser on Kernel that signs in with saved logins or Google, reads one time codes from email or messages, fills checkout forms, takes seat holds and completes orders on sites such as Amazon and Instacart, stopping to tell the user what a site needs when it gets stuck. The user can watch the live view, take control and hand the session back. The Pally Mac app lets Pally see the user's own Mac screen, find a file and run the next step, and Cloud Mac, sold separately, gives it a dedicated macOS machine in the cloud.

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