Towards the Agentic Web

For the last two decades, the web has been fundamentally one-directional. Businesses publish pages. Users browse them. Search bars help you find things, but you’re still doing all the work — clicking, comparing, opening tabs, reading specs, going back, trying again.

Even the best e-commerce websites today are really just sophisticated catalogues. They wait for you to figure out what you need.

Agents change everything

Large language models have unlocked something that wasn’t possible before: software that can hold a real-time, contextual conversation with a user — and actually do things on their behalf.

We’re not talking about chatbots. Chatbots answer questions. Agents understand intent, hold context across a conversation, and take action. They can reason about what you’re trying to accomplish and guide you there.

When you embed this capability directly into a website or product, the entire user experience shifts. The product stops being a catalogue you search through and starts being a collaborator that helps you get things done.

What this looks like in practice

Imagine you’re planning to paint your house this weekend. Today, that means hours of research across multiple sites, followed by a long session on a hardware store’s website — searching for paint, then brushes, then rollers, then primer, then drop cloths. You open dozens of tabs. You cross-reference product compatibility. You second-guess quantities.

Now imagine the same store offers a simple prompt: “What are you trying to get done this weekend?”

You select “painting my house.” A short conversation follows — interior or exterior? What colour? How large is the space? — and within a minute, a complete basket of everything you need is ready for checkout. No tabs. No guesswork. No wasted time.

The Agentic Web

What’s emerging is something we think of as the Agentic Web. Instead of users navigating static pages, they engage in dynamic, goal-oriented, generative UI with the products they use.

This applies far beyond e-commerce. It applies to any product where users have a job to be done and need help getting there — travel booking, financial planning, health and wellness, B2B procurement, education, and dozens of other verticals.

The companies that adopt this interaction model early won’t just have a better feature. They’ll have a fundamentally better product.

The transformation is already underway. The question is which businesses will lead it — and what infrastructure they’ll need to make it work.

This is the first post in a three-part series on the future of product experiences.