Hi friends,
We're only 12 days into 2026 and the ground under agentic commerce is already shifting. This is not a mass email. It's a direct line from our founding team: what changed, and what we shipped in response.
If you watched Sundar Pichai's NRF keynote, you felt it: 2026 is starting with a clear message. AI is no longer "helping shopping". It is becoming the place where shopping starts, and increasingly, where it finishes.
URGENT: our shopify app has been granted early-access to the Shopify Agents Marketplace Catalog
Following the UCP (Universal commerce protocol) release, we got an early access preview to the Shopify Agents Marketplace Catalog - this means you can start understand how agents are digesting your agentic product feeds
Why it matters: this makes it much easier for AI agents to browse products across stores, not just inside a single storefront.
If you want, reply with one intent you care about and we'll run it with you and share what we see.
You asked, we shipped: Intent Lab
Over the past few weeks, the most common question we heard was: "How do I see what people (and agents) will ask about my products, and test it?"
So we built an Intent Lab.
Intent Lab helps you generate real-world intents from the places that matter to your brand:
- Search queries
- Community language (threads and forums)
- Your own campaign briefs
You can use it to:
- Stress-test how new trends and category language might affect discovery
- See how a new product line or campaign is likely to show up in AI-driven shopping flows
- Compare how your catalog vs competitors responds to the same set of intents
In practice: less guessing, more "this is how people ask, and this is how your catalog currently answers."
The bigger picture: ACP vs UCP (and why operators should care)
Two "pipes" are emerging fast:
- One optimized for in-chat checkout and frictionless buying (OpenAI with ChatGPT)
- One optimized for the full journey from discovery to loyalty and post-purchase support (Google AI Mode)
For brands, the practical takeaway is not "pick a winner."
It's this:
AI agents can now find and buy products without ever loading your website.
So your catalog needs to be:
- Understandable (clear product info)
- Trustworthy (consistent data)
- Complete (the attributes an agent needs to confidently choose you)
That's the slice of the stack 40RTY is focused on:
- Intent Lab: understand what people and agents will ask for
- Catalog audits: see how well your products answer those intents in agent surfaces
- Recommendations: concrete fixes so your data, text, and images help agents pick you
Where we need your help
First of all - we appreciate your referrals. Please keep them going! We now have a new shiny website you can share
A lot is changing fast, and we want to stay grounded in what operators are actually seeing.
Hit reply and tell me:
- One shopping journey where you wish an AI agent handled it better for your brand
- One place where your current catalog is clearly not ready yet
We'll use that to decide what we build and what we publish next.
Talk soon,
Tamir & Yoav
Founding Team @ 40RTY.ai