Commerce Agent

A Commerce Agent is a set of AI programs built to handle the online shopping process on your behalf. It splits into two roles. The shopping side acts like a department store's information desk clerk: it asks what you're looking for, compares products for you, fills your cart, and answers questions about shipping or returns. The merchant side acts like a store manager: it looks at sales, checks inventory, and suggests prices or ad copy.

The important part is that this information desk clerk never handles money directly. Clicking the checkout button or actually changing a price always waits for a human's final approval. The clerk only prepares the paperwork and puts it on the desk—stamping it is still a person's job.

Another thing worth noting is that this clerk doesn't switch counters depending on the request. One agent stays with you through the whole conversation, pulling out whatever files are needed as they come up.

In articles, you'll see lines like "Anthropic open-sourced a blueprint for building Commerce Agents." Here, a Commerce Agent isn't a finished, ready-to-use shopping app—it's a code skeleton that each company assembles and fits to its own inventory and order systems. The example stores and products are all fictional, so no real orders or payments actually happen.

Ask a chatbot this to check the design principles:

"When designing a Commerce Agent split into a shopping agent and a merchant agent, explain why tasks like checkout or price changes require human approval instead of having the AI execute them directly."