DoorDash is building its own AI agent while allowing third-party agents like Muse to operate on its platform. This dual strategy exposes a core conflict for businesses: build a proprietary agent to own the customer relationship and data, or risk being disintermediated by more universal, external agents.

Superhuman Go is not just another AI assistant; it's a platform designed to be the "mass transit" for third-party AI agents. By providing the underlying infrastructure, they enable partners like Radical Candor to embed their unique knowledge directly into users' workflows across any application, a powerful distribution strategy.

Rather than allowing outside personal agents to overwhelm sites with bursty API calls, consumer services like Spotify or Resi will wrap capabilities inside their own vertical agents. Horizontal personal agents will communicate agent-to-agent with platform-owned agents that preserve native monetization.

The future of customer acquisition isn't just human-to-AI. Soon, consumer AI assistants (e.g., ChatGPT) will book services directly with a company's AI system, bypassing the traditional website journey entirely. Businesses must prepare their platforms for this inevitable AI-to-AI communication layer.

AI agents can perform complex tasks like ordering food by interacting directly with restaurants and drivers, bypassing aggregator platforms like DoorDash. This disintermediation removes the "middleman tax," returning margin and power to the original creators, fulfilling the internet's early promise of direct, open access without powerful gatekeepers.

ZocDoc's CEO argues that because multiple AI agents (from Google, OpenAI, etc.) are competing for users, they must integrate with essential real-world services like ZocDoc, DoorDash, and Uber to be useful. This gives service platforms significant negotiating power they never had in Google's search monopoly era.

The relationship between user and service provider is changing. Agents will soon sign up for platforms like Vercel, manage payments, and solve problems with zero human intervention. This transforms the service provider into a vendor for the agent itself, not just the human behind it.

Soon, AI agents will make purchasing decisions for humans, creating a new economy that will dwarf human traffic. Businesses must shift from optimizing a "pixel-perfect" UI for humans to a "bits-perfect" platform for agents, focusing on API clarity, data structure, and overcoming agent biases.

The rise of personal AI agents represents a new layer of aggregation that threatens established platforms like Amazon. These agents can compare services and route purchases to the best option, turning dominant platforms into interchangeable suppliers. This forces incumbents to either block agents, ceding ground to competitors, or lose control over the customer relationship.