Merchant-Neutral Action Network
Instinct
Merchant neutrality is a product advantage only if Instinct becomes the best routing layer for real world tasks. The opening is the same one that helped Plaid in banking and could help Rutter in commerce, users and developers do not want to wire up a different flow for every booking system, marketplace, or service app. If Instinct can compare options across providers, then execute the chosen action reliably, it can sit above fragmented supply instead of being trapped inside one ecosystem.
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The market is clearly fragmenting into many connected commerce surfaces. Google expanded Gemini connected apps on August 12, 2026 into Ticketmaster, OpenTable, Angi, Thumbtack, Zocdoc, car rental, and more, which shows demand spans many verticals instead of one dominant booking stack.
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The hard part is turning brittle clicks into structured actions. Apple’s App Intents framework exists so apps can expose actions to Siri and Apple Intelligence, and the same logic applies here. A provider level action API for refund, reschedule, or modify reservation is much more durable than screen scraping.
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Neutral orchestration has strong precedents. Rutter was built around merchants using multiple systems at once, and Rally framed checkout as a Switzerland layer above platforms that try to keep merchants inside their own stack. Instinct can play a similar role for service transactions, where supply is fragmented and platform self preference creates room for an independent router.
This points toward Instinct becoming an action network, not just an assistant. The winning version is a layer where merchants publish structured capabilities, agents route to the best provider, and Instinct earns on transaction flow and distribution. As assistants spread across phones, browsers, and work software, the neutral control point above many providers becomes more valuable.