Siddhant Atrish

My moat: I'm doing all of it for fun | alum @bitspilaniindia | building ai at oolka, ex: @we_are_cult

[Thenuka Karunaratne @thenuka_k]

Exclusive: Instinct is using Exa for web search

We gave Instinct URLs for nonexistent pages on a website we administer. Since the requests were for fake pages and the timing matched our conversation with Instinct, the requests couldn’t plausibly have come from anything else.

In total, it made about 12 requests over an hour and a half. We checked Cloudflare analytics and the server’s raw request logs to get the full picture.

A few things stood out:

- Instinct used Exa to fetch pages. Every direct fetch arrived with the user agent Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ExaUser/1.0; +https://t.co/5bpRmsNnr1), from a different IP each time.

- Exa signs its requests (Web Bot Auth, Signature-Agent: "https://t.co/a0mlQT1S3h"). But nothing in the requests identifies Instinct. They are indistinguishable from those of any other product built on Exa.

- In one test, after the fetch returned a 404, Instinct loaded the page in its browser without being asked.

- Instinct’s browser had no self-identifying features. It looked like standard Chrome on desktop Linux from a residential IP address, with no bot user agent or signature.

We directly asked it to use the browser in two other tests. All three browser visits came from the same residential IP over about 80 minutes. The browser kept its cache between visits, consistent with a persistent browser behind a residential proxy. We can’t say whether that IP is stable over longer periods or shared with other users, so it’s not a reliable way to identify Instinct.

This presents unique challenges for marketers hoping to track Instinct traffic to their site. Unlike ChatGPT, Claude, or Meta, Instinct doesn’t send its own user agent or signature. Its fetches look like generic Exa traffic, and its browser visits look like a normal user’s.

All of this means you can’t track, allow, or block Instinct specifically. The only reason we could link these requests to Instinct was that we controlled the URLs and the timing. For normal traffic, you don’t have those luxuries.

Link to it on sunbeam: https://t.co/xcWSIMDYI5

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@Slikkclub this onboarding is soo cool. Love it.

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@samiprajguru @BCCI TV manufacturers going sad in pakistan after this, coz match hota toh boht TV toote hote (firse lol)

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@Nithin0dha @grok pls explain how money would be lost?

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@uff_meri_adaa ice burst for the win

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

Building for bharat requires a INR 10K investment on day0 (for an android phone)

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

At the moment AGI is Ads Generating Income for all openai employees

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@the_rutujaaa Are you a jain?

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@nush_1320 Competing Against Luck - awesome in distinguishing real customer pain from noise.

Gives some structure to thinking/evaluating problem statements that seed ventures solve

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@rajshamani @deepigoyal Read culture by @deepigoyal after this podcast, my picks

1. Find your own mentor: Decades of experience can be gained in days (Page 69)

2. Don’t be Afraid: We pay a high to avoid mild embarrassments (Page 79)

3. If you want feedback, ask for it: Appreciate criticism (Page 92)

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

Two most important things I learnt in 2025:

1. Awareness helps you decide.
Analysis paralysis helps you delay.
The gap between the two is decisiveness.

2. Influence without authority is a skill for life (not just early career days).

What is that something you learnt in 2025?

[LALAKULA @Txmmyily]

just wanna thank God in advance for the run i’m about to go on

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@Msdian2011 @vijaygajera Savage

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

ek din mai bhi bolunga ‘atrish aagya oye’

[Siddhant Atrish @wakeupwalasid]

@nils100km guide