Anthropic made its ambitions to compete against OpenAI and Google in agentic commerce clear with the release of new features for Claude, its suite of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
The new Claude options will build on what Anthropic has already learned, observing how retailers have built and used custom agents with the existing platform, a representative for Anthropic shared with Digital Commerce 360.
Now, Anthropic will provide pre-built designs for agents, intended to serve specific roles in ecommerce processes. In conjunction with the rollout, Anthropic announced that Accenture, Mastercard, Visa and Shopify will all put Claude’s new agentic commerce capabilities to use in offerings for their clients.
What are Anthropic’s new agentic commerce features for Claude?
Anthropic called its offerings “a blueprint” in an official announcement dated Sept. 2. The technology company outlined that it would package the options together in order to include “the harnesses, patterns, and guardrails an engineering team needs to get a commerce agent running in days.” An associated plugin for Claude Code, Anthropic’s large language model (LLM)-based tool for developers, will accompany the launch.
Demonstration of Claude’s shopper agent | Image credit: Anthropic press release
For online retailers, Anthropic set up two agents with specific use cases in mind:
- Shopper agent. It’s meant to be used within a retailer’s app or ecommerce website. It assists customers with questions and checkout experiences using a conversational interface.
- Merchant agent. Intended to be used for operations, facing an organization’s team members. It helps with areas such as sales and inventory data.
Anthropic shared examples of the situations that the shopper agent would address. Those included searching a retailer’s product catalog and recommending choices based on context. Moreover, Anthropic said the agent would remember a shopper’s preferences as they proceed through a chat experience. Along the way, the agent is expected to share products visually, along with text, ultimately adding desired items to a cart and handing a cart over for checkout to begin.
For merchant team members, Anthropic intends for its organization-facing agent to answer questions about sales activity. Anthropic also built it to proactively suggest actions when it flags problems. Moreover, Anthropic frames potential output as encompassing marketing materials and campaign strategy, noting pricing and promotions that may be effective.
Who will use Claude’s ecommerce tools?
At launch, Anthropic listed Accenture, Mastercard and Visa as users of the new agent designs. That will mean leveraging them for their clients and merchant networks. Anthropic noted that Shopify would release a public code repository, with implementations built with Anthropic’s new agent designs. In turn, Shopify-based ecommerce sites can use the agents, allowing retailers to connect the agents to catalog data.
Sample showing Claude’s merchant agent | Image credit: Anthropic press release
Anthropic detailed that the designs can be referenced to build custom agents with its tools. Those include Claude’s Messages API, its Agent SDK and Claude Managed Agents, which is currently in beta.
Anthropic claims that retailers running shopping agents built with Claude have already seen shoppers add more to their carts and become 60% more likely to complete final purchases.
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