This entrepreneur treated an AI agent like a colleague. Then it started doing the work.

Donnie Goins, a seasoned software entrepreneur, signed up for an AI agent called Instinct instead of using the more conventional chatbots like Gemini and Perplexity. This new agent, which he describes as having "the instinct to do it without me asking for specifics," proved to be a surprisingly capable assistant.

Within a week of using Instinct, Goins was impressed with the agent's ability to review his PuttEZ website, spot issues, and even fix them such as rewriting copy. The agent then went on to handle social media accounts across multiple platforms, generate bios, keywords, and hashtags, create some of the accounts, and guide him through the rest. Instinct also helped with video content, reviewing and improving instructional videos, writing titles, and creating short clips for social media.

As a marketing analyst, Instinct compiled daily reports on online conversations about putting, summarized the discussion, and drafted suggested replies. It also suggested adding Reddit to their platform list, which Goins hadn't considered. In terms of operations, Instinct helped with tariff classifications, gathered supporting photos for paperwork, and prepared the application for him to review.

It also compared freight forwarders for a shipment of training devices and researched potential promoters for the product post-launch.

However, the experience wasn't without its flaws. Like most AI systems, Instinct occasionally made mistakes or "hallucinated." Goins also wished the agent could organize work into separate projects instead of one long conversation. Despite these issues and the lack of integrations with his email, calendars, and Google Workspace, Goins came away convinced that AI agents are a new breed of technology, different from the chatbots he'd used before.