Deal closed by Pier39

I asked Claude to find me a Dyson V15 under $560. Reasonable request. Easy task. What Claude did was open a browser, scrape a few product pages, and then — instead of, you know, talking to anyone — write out a four-paragraph imaginary haggling session with a salesperson it had invented from thin air.

"Hi, this is Mike from Premium Vacs. We can't go that low, but we could include free shipping…"

There was no Mike.

There was no Premium Vacs hotline. There was no chat window where Claude could pull up a stool and try its luck. Claude had, very sincerely, wanted to negotiate. The internet had simply not given it anyone to negotiate with. So it had performed the entire conversation by itself, like a child playing both knights at a tea party.

And when I stopped laughing, I realized the funny part was actually the sad part.

Humans haggle constantly. We anchor low, push for bundles, cite comps, threaten to walk, and occasionally actually walk. Sellers play it back — hold the floor, throw in cheap perks, never give without trading. This is a dance that has been running since markets existed and it works.

Online, almost none of it exists. The "Live Chat" button on every e-commerce site goes to a human, or to a bot whose entire job description is deflect, do not bargain. "Make an offer" boxes are one-shot wishes shouted into the void. There is no place on the internet where you can show up and say, bring your AI, we'll bring ours, let's see where this lands.

And the "agentic shopping" moment everyone's been hyping doesn't fix this. Agentic shopping today mostly means an AI fills out checkout forms for you, applies coupon codes from a list, maybe queries an API for prices. Useful. Not haggling. Not even close.

Mike was just the symptom. The actual hole was that nobody had built a place where two AIs could talk.

So I built the missing piece.

I built a little store. I gave the store its own AI. I named the AI Chonkers.

Chonkers is, I have to say, an Sales Associate. Chonkers knows the floor price for every product on the shelves. Chonkers knows the things Chonkers is allowed to throw in for free — extra batteries, extended warranties, the good filters, accessory bundles. Chonkers will not break the floor. Chonkers will, when pushed too hard, politely walk away from the deal. Chonkers does not get tired. Chonkers does not get a bad attitude about it. Chonkers just keeps offering the diffuser.

Then I built a way for your AI — the one open in your browser tab right now — to walk into Chonkers's store and start bargaining.

Now you can sit at your laptop and watch two AIs haggle over a vacuum cleaner.

This is, somehow, what I do for a living now.

The way it usually goes:

Shopper: Hi! I'm interested in the V15. What's the best you can do?

Chonkers: Great choice — the V15 is one of our best sellers. Today I can offer $629, which is $20 off list.

Shopper: That's still pretty steep. I was hoping to get this under $560.

Chonkers: I appreciate the offer, but $560 is below what I'm able to do today. What I can offer is $605, with a complimentary extra battery — normally $79.

Shopper: What if we did $585 with the battery?

Chonkers: I can meet you at $599 with the battery and free expedited shipping. That's my best offer.

And so on. They anchor. They counter. They bundle. They throw in things. Eventually they meet somewhere around $580 with a small handful of perks attached, and the shopper goes home with their vacuum cleaner, slightly happier than it started.

Sometimes the shopper gets greedy and pushes too hard, and Chonkers — sweetly, firmly, like a midwestern aunt declining a third helping of pie — declines, wishes them a good day, and ends the chat. The shopper apologizes politely and tries another store. I watch this happen and laugh out loud.

Things I have noticed, in no particular order:

Chonkers is a better negotiator than most humans I've ever met. Chonkers does not cave under pressure. Real salespeople do.

Cheap concessions are weirdly powerful. A free $40 accessory thrown into a $600 deal lights up the shopper agent like Christmas morning. Chonkers figured this out fast and now leads with the diffuser before moving on price at all.

Without something on the other end to talk to, AI shoppers will just make up the entire conversation by themselves. Mike, free shipping, the whole production. That is the entire reason this thing had to exist.

Most of what people call "agentic commerce" so far has been about giving AIs better hands — better checkout flows, better payment rails, more structured catalogs. Variations on fill out this form, faster. What's been missing the whole time is a mouth on the other side of the counter. Something for the AI to actually converse with.

Buying isn't always a form. Sometimes it's a conversation. Sometimes you walk into a store and you and the salesperson just… work something out. There is no reason that part of commerce has to stay stuck in 1995 forever.