Anthropic has launched a blueprint to help retailers build AI shopping and merchant agents on Claude, with the goal of having the technology in place for the holiday shopping season. The agents can search product catalogues, make recommendations, build carts, and handle customer service questions, but they stop short of actually completing the purchase.
That distinction could be important for retailer wary of giving AI too much control. The customer still completes the transaction through the retailer’s existing checkout, while the merchant retains control of payment and the broader shopping experience.
Potential Benefits for Retailers
Retailers can also use the tool to generate suggestions around inventory, pricing, and marketing campaigns. Agents have controls that tie product and pricing recommendations to catalogue data and are designed to prevent manipulative upselling. Payment and the payment processing remain with the retailer.
“Consumers are increasingly using AI tools in their shopping searches to find what they are looking for, but are not ready to delegate their purchase decisions at scale,” said Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “This is where merchants are building right now, and Anthropic has recognized that with this product toolkit. Many high-profile retailers are already reporting positive results in sales lifts when AI agents can discover their products, present them to consumers, and suggest additional products that would enhance the purchase.”
What Merchants and Consumers Are Looking For
Anthropic says early tests showed that retail site visits driven by AI converted at a 60% higher rate than traffic from other sources. The company also claims that cart sizes increased by 30% to 35% for one partner using the technology.
Because the tool operates within the retailer’s own website or app, the merchant retains control of the customer experience and underlying data. That is potentially important as retailers consider how much of the shopping journey they want AI agents to handle, and whether greater reliance on third-party AI could weaken their direct relationships with customers.
Whether consumers and retailers ultimately want AI to handle more of the purchasing process remains an open question. For now, Anthropic’s approach represents a more limited form of agentic shopping, in which AI can help with product discovery and cart building while the retailer’s existing checkout and the customer remain in control of the final transaction.
“The tech is there, consumers are not yet,” said Apgar. “By launching this product, Anthropic is acknowledging that the industry is way out over its skis on agentic commerce and dialing it back to what merchants and consumers are looking for in 2026.”
