What is "agentic"?
A description of behaviour, not a fixed category of product: something is acting agentically in a given moment when it's pursuing a goal on its own initiative, rather than only responding to what it's just been asked.
2 min read
The same piece of software can be agentic for one step and not the next. An assistant answering "what time do you open" is just responding. The same assistant told "book a table for four tomorrow if there's one, otherwise Thursday" and going off to check both, decide, and act, is behaving agentically for that step. Most products aren't purely one or the other, they're mostly responsive with an agentic capability switched on for specific jobs. "Agentic commerce" names the case where that capability is aimed specifically at finding, booking or buying something.
Good for
Telling a specific step or interaction apart from a passive response.
Not good for
Labelling a whole product once and for all. Most products are agentic for some jobs and not others.
What is agentic commerce?
Commerce where an AI agent, acting on a real person's goal, does some or all of the finding, deciding and buying that a person used to do by hand.
What is an AI agent?
An AI system that's given a goal and works toward it on a person's behalf, rather than one that just answers whatever's typed into it, turn by turn.
What is an agent credential?
A short-lived, scoped proof that an AI agent is who it claims to be, checked before a business trusts a request enough to act on it.