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Instinct: lists, email and reminders through chat
Update a Notion list, pick up a task from email and receive a reminder through Messages. What Instinct can do, where it could help and what a simple test showed.
AI-assisted research and testing by VCG. The article identifies who performed the actions, what we verified and what was outside the test.
What you can do with Instinct
Instinct is a personal assistant connected to apps that you can message through iMessage. In the session we tested, it could create and update a Notion list, receive an email at its own address and send reminders through Messages.
The useful part is combining those actions. You can request a change in chat, keep working directly in Notion and later receive a reminder about what remains outstanding. These are small, ordinary jobs: updating a list, recovering a deadline from an email or remembering to finish something.
The September 8 announcement of individual email addresses adds another way to give it work. A 1Password integration for the early access group has also been announced; we did not test it. Features available in one account should be distinguished from those still rolling out.
Where it could be useful
These are proposed uses, based on the actions observed. We have not tested these full workflows or their recurring operation.
A list you can update on the go
Groceries are a simple example: send “add coffee and mark the eggs as bought,” while keeping the list in Notion to check or edit directly. This makes sense if Notion is already where you keep it. If you only need to note two items, setting up an assistant may take more effort than opening a note.
Getting ready for a deadline
A maker could keep a landing-page launch checklist in Notion: domain, copy, screenshots and form. The request would be: “Tomorrow at ten, check this list and remind me only of what is still outstanding.” The useful result would be an updated reminder, without returning to chat to report every completed task.
The test below supports that idea on a small scale. It does not show Instinct supervising a launch or independently detecting whether work is truly finished: someone still needs to maintain the list’s status.
Turning an email into a task with a deadline
A demo invitation might contain the session date and an earlier deadline for submitting materials. Asking Instinct to identify what you need to prepare and remind you can keep that obligation from getting buried in email. In the test, it distinguished both dates and brought the outstanding work into Messages.
A deliberately selected message is easier to evaluate initially than an entire inbox. Our test used a synthetic email sent to Instinct’s address, without connecting Gmail to the assistant.
VCG diagram of the observed workflow. This is a visual explanation, not an interface screenshot.
Keeping a small queue of work
Ideas to develop, resources to review or prototype issues could live on a Notion page. Adding something through chat and requesting a later check reduces app switching. Before using it with a complex database, properties, filters and permissions would need checking: this test only covers a page with checkboxes.
A simple test: a Notion list and a reminder
The test involved creating a list, updating it through chat and requesting a reminder that would check its state later. It took place on September 17, 2026, using fictional data in an existing account. Results were checked directly in Notion.
First, a parent page had to be selected and access granted to the Instinct connection. Providing the link alone was insufficient. In this account, where the connection already existed, the path was page menu → Connections → Instinct → Add to page. Permission covered that page and its descendants, as described in Notion’s documentation.
Starting point: five checkboxes created by Instinct on the page selected for the test.
Next came a request to replace milk with oat drink, mark eggs as bought and add apples and coffee without duplicating the latter. The same page was updated:
It replaced the milk, checked the eggs and added apples. Coffee was already present and was not duplicated.
The reminder was to mention only outstanding items. While it was pending, tomatoes, bread and coffee were checked off directly in Notion, without reporting those changes in chat. The later reminder listed only oat drink and apples, matching the page.
Request and response in Messages. The reminder reflected changes made outside the conversation.
Result checked directly in Notion. The checkboxes remained manually editable.
This is an everyday example, not a demonstration of advanced autonomy. It does show that the reminder went beyond repeating the last list in chat. Requested at 13:59 for three minutes later, it arrived at 14:03 according to the visible timestamps: useful in this case, insufficient to judge exact punctuality or reliability over several weeks.
What happened with the email
The test email described a workshop on September 22 at 18:00 and requested a title and description before September 18 at 12:00, in Madrid time. Instinct asked for confirmation in Messages before following its instructions.
Once confirmed, it distinguished the submission deadline from the workshop date and sent the requested reminder. The draft remained “title pending” and “description pending”: it preserved the gaps but did not produce a reply ready to send. The useful part observed was picking up an obligation from email and bringing it back later through chat.
What to check before depending on it
On the test date, Instinct’s website offered access through a waitlist or invitation. We have not verified public pricing. Payments, calls, bookings and continued use over several days were not tested here either.
Permissions are part of setup. Start with a limited page and check where it writes. Its privacy policy also distinguishes disconnecting an integration from deleting previously indexed data: the former does not automatically do the latter.
For a maker, the practical question is whether there is a list or an outstanding task already managed across several apps. That is a useful place to try this workflow. If each request takes more checking and correcting than the effort it saves, it is not yet solving that job.
About the test: Codex-assisted operation in an authorized VCG account, with additional manual changes by the user. Original screenshots from September 17; the list and email contain test data. Screenshots are in Spanish; the explanation translates their requests and results.
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