# Instinct users report slowdowns as capacity warnings surface > Source: > Published: 2026-09-24 18:45:30+00:00 # Instinct users report slowdowns as capacity warnings surface **One user described delayed email alerts. The Information reported that Instinct had sometimes warned users it was at full capacity and responses might be slower; that warning does not establish how many users experienced delays.** By [RuntimeWire Staff](https://runtimewire.com/author/runtimewire-staff) ยท Published Primary source: [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9) ## Why it matters An assistant that monitors email and returns to unfinished tasks depends on timely execution. The September reports describe delays, but provide no public measure of how often they occur, how many users are affected or how quickly Instinct recovers. [Instinct](https://instinct.co/?ref=runtimewire), the personal AI assistant founded by Noah Shinn, drew fresh reports of slower responses and delayed tasks on September 24th. [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9?ref=runtimewire) reported that Rex Lowther, an Instinct user who runs a nonprofit in Oregon, had noticed "a little slowdown on some tasks." Lowther said the assistant sometimes acted "more like a person who might forget to do something," including taking too long to alert him when an email arrived. Separately, [The Information reported](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/personal-ai-app-instinct-faces-compute-crunch-lead-new-funding?ref=runtimewire) that, over the previous few weeks, Instinct had sometimes notified users it was running at full capacity and that "responses may be slower." The warning concerned possible delays; it does not establish that those users actually experienced a slowdown. The reports do not establish how many users were affected, what caused Lowther's delays, how long they lasted or whether his experience and the capacity warnings involved the same incident. The service is still in beta, and sign-ups may be placed on a waitlist, limiting what these accounts show about performance across a larger user base. Shinn's product thesis, described on [his site](https://noahshinn.com/?ref=runtimewire), is to let people text or call an assistant that uses phones and computers much as people do. Instinct says it connects to email, messaging, screens, audio and location, and can follow up on dropped threads or arrange services such as airport rides. A delayed email alert is a direct miss against that promise of handling work in the background. Shinn was an early research scientist at Sierra and first author of [Reflexion](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11366?ref=runtimewire), a 2023 paper on agents using written feedback from failed attempts to guide later decisions. That research concerns agent behavior; the September reports raise a more operational question about whether Instinct can complete tasks promptly as users rely on it. ### Compute is part of the product The latest reports follow an earlier slowdown in August. Shinn wrote on X at the time that some users may have noticed slower responses over the previous 24 hours, [according to Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9?ref=runtimewire). The two episodes indicate recurring reports of slower performance, but the available accounts do not show whether they shared a cause or how broadly either slowdown affected users. [Hang Huang, founder of agent infrastructure company Insforge](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9?ref=runtimewire), wrote on X that infrastructure struggles can hurt a product as it scales. Georgia Tech computer science professor Alexey Tumanov [told Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9?ref=runtimewire) that Meta's control over its data centers gives it more flexibility to add capacity. "Owning the datacenter really helps - you have arbitrary scaling control," Tumanov said. That comparison is relevant as Instinct competes with Meta's Muse, which Meta introduced in the United States on September 8th. [Meta says Muse runs on a dedicated virtual machine](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/amp/?ref=runtimewire); [Business Insider reported that venture capitalist Vinay Iyengar](https://www.businessinsider.com/instinct-slowdown-reaction-muse-rivalry-2026-9?ref=runtimewire), who said he had used both products, considered them "at feature parity" but believed Muse had an edge in compute availability. Iyengar's view is an individual assessment, not an independently measured comparison of uptime or response times. Instinct has raised substantial funding, according to [TechCrunch's report](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/viral-ai-startup-instinct-has-raised-350-million-at-a-2-5-billion-valuation/?ref=runtimewire): $250 million in a Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, bringing reported total funding to $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Those figures do not establish how much computing capacity the company has secured or how it is allocated. The reports offer specific examples of delayed tasks and a separate account of capacity warnings, but no public measure of frequency, duration or recovery. For Instinct, that leaves the scale of the performance problem unsettled; for users, it leaves open how reliably the assistant will follow through when asked to work in the background.