Question 1

What is agentic commerce?

Accepted Answer

Agentic commerce emerges when autonomous AI agents become active participants in markets \u2014 buying, selling, negotiating, and fulfilling orders without a human clicking through an interface. It covers three transaction patterns: machine-to-human (an agent purchasing from a traditional business), human-to-machine (a person buying from an agent-run service), and machine-to-machine (agents on both sides of the deal). The shift is structural, not incremental: when the customer is an algorithm wi

Question 2

What is agentic AI?

Accepted Answer

Agentic AI refers to autonomous systems that act on behalf of humans \u2014 anticipating needs, making decisions, executing transactions, and operating independently without constant human supervision. Unlike traditional AI that responds to prompts, agentic AI initiates action, pursues goals across multiple steps, and adapts its behaviour based on outcomes. Agentic AI powers agentic commerce and agentic shopping, where agents transact autonomously on behalf of human principals.

Question 3

What is Agentic Experience Design?

Accepted Answer

AXD is the discipline that governs how people and autonomous AI systems build, maintain, and repair working relationships. It was created because traditional UX \u2014 designed for screen-based interactions where the user is always present \u2014 has no framework for systems that act while the human is away. AXD addresses the five core challenges of human-agent relationships: how authority is granted, how boundaries are set, how actions are monitored from a distance, how humans step back in when

Question 4

What does AXD stand for?

Accepted Answer

AXD stands for Agentic Experience Design. The \u2018A\u2019 denotes agency \u2014 the capacity of AI systems to act autonomously on behalf of humans. The \u2018X\u2019 represents experience \u2014 the full arc of the human-agent relationship, from initial delegation through absent-state operation to outcome assessment. The \u2018D\u2019 signals design \u2014 the intentional structuring of these relationships rather than leaving them to emerge by accident.

Question 5

What is a machine customer?

Accepted Answer

A machine customer is an autonomous AI agent that acts as a buyer on behalf of a human \u2014 discovering products, comparing options, negotiating prices, and completing transactions without the human ever visiting a website or opening an app. Machine customers operate with zero brand loyalty, infinite comparison patience, and no susceptibility to emotional marketing. This concept challenges every assumption of customer experience design.

Question 6

What is trust architecture?

Accepted Answer

Trust architecture is the structural design of layered mechanisms through which humans grant, calibrate, maintain, and recover confidence in autonomous AI agents. It is not a feature or a setting \u2014 it is the primary material of agentic experience design. Trust architecture encompasses trust calibration, trust recovery, and trust debt \u2014 the accumulated deficit from repeated small failures that erodes the human-agent relationship over time.

Question 7

What is delegation design?

Accepted Answer

Delegation design is the practice of designing the structures through which humans grant, constrain, monitor, and revoke authority given to autonomous agents. It determines what an agent is permitted to do, for how long, under what conditions, and what triggers human re-engagement. Without delegation design, there is no principled boundary between human intention and machine action.

Question 8

How do AI agents buy things on behalf of people?

Accepted Answer

AI agents buy on behalf of people through a structured delegation chain: the human specifies intent (what they want, how much they\u2019re willing to spend, what constraints apply), the agent translates that intent into machine-executable criteria, then autonomously discovers, evaluates, negotiates, and transacts within the delegated authority. The process requires trust architecture (so the human can verify outcomes), delegation design (so the agent knows its boundaries), and observability (so

Question 9

How do humans stay in control of autonomous agents?

Accepted Answer

Humans maintain control through three AXD mechanisms: delegation design (setting explicit boundaries on what the agent can do, for how long, and under what conditions), interrupt patterns (defining when and how the human can intervene), and observability surfaces (providing clear visibility into what the agent did while the human was absent). The key insight is that control in agentic systems is not about constant supervision \u2014 it is about well-designed authority boundaries and reliable rec

Question 10

What is the difference between AXD and UX?

Accepted Answer

AXD and UX are parallel disciplines, not competing ones. UX was built for screen-based interactions where the user is present and navigating an interface. AXD was built for agentic systems where the user is absent and the agent acts autonomously. In UX, the designer specifies what appears on screen. In AXD, the designer specifies what results \u2014 the outcomes, constraints, and conditions for human re-engagement. AXD works in trust, delegation, and observability rather than attention, affordan

Question 11

What is the Agentic Commerce Protocol?

Accepted Answer

The Agentic Commerce Protocol is the emerging standard for how autonomous AI agents discover, evaluate, negotiate with, and transact through merchant systems. It defines the machine-readable interfaces, trust handshakes, and delegation verification mechanisms that enable agent-to-merchant commerce at scale. The protocol addresses four layers: discovery (how agents find merchants), evaluation (how agents assess offerings), negotiation (how agents and merchants agree terms), and settlement (how tr

Question 12

What is the Universal Commerce Protocol?

Accepted Answer

The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is the theoretical framework for a standardised, interoperable protocol layer that would allow any autonomous agent to transact with any merchant system, regardless of the underlying technology stack. It proposes four protocol layers: identity (agent authentication and principal verification), intent (structured expression of purchasing requirements), negotiation (machine-to-machine terms agreement), and settlement (transaction execution and verification).

Question 13

What is verifiable intent?

Accepted Answer

Verifiable intent is the cryptographically provable expression of a human principal\u2019s purchasing requirements, constraints, and authority boundaries \u2014 structured so that any party in the transaction chain can confirm that an agent\u2019s actions fall within the scope of what the human actually authorised. It is the trust infrastructure that makes agentic payments possible: without verifiable intent, there is no way to distinguish a legitimate agent transaction from an unauthorised one.

Question 14

Who is Tony Wood?

Accepted Answer

Tony Wood is an Emerging Technologies and Innovation Consultant and Agentic AI Product Specialist at the UK\u2019s leading retail bank, based in Manchester, United Kingdom. He is the founder of the AXD (Agentic Experience Design) Institute \u2014 the canonical research home for agentic experience design and agentic commerce. His founding claim is that the design of human-agent relationships requires a new discipline built on trust architecture, delegation design, and outcome specification.

Question 15

What does Tony Wood consult on?

Accepted Answer

Tony Wood consults on the intersection of agentic AI and commercial strategy. His consulting practice spans four domains: agentic commerce strategy (helping organisations prepare for machine customers), trust architecture design (building the trust infrastructure for human-agent relationships), AXD readiness assessment (evaluating organisational preparedness across the four pillars), and agentic AI product strategy (designing products that serve both human users and autonomous agents).

Question 16

What is zero-click commerce?

Accepted Answer

Zero-click commerce is the commercial condition in which an autonomous AI agent completes an entire purchase cycle \u2014 discovery, evaluation, selection, negotiation, and transaction \u2014 without the human customer ever visiting a product page, reading a review, or interacting with a checkout interface. It is the logical endpoint of agentic shopping and the purest expression of absent-state design in agentic commerce.

Question 17

What is agent legibility?

Accepted Answer

Agent legibility is the design property that makes an autonomous system\u2019s state, capabilities, constraints, and reasoning accessible to human understanding \u2014 not merely visible, but comprehensible. It is the prerequisite for trust calibration in agentic AI systems. Legibility differs from transparency in a critical respect: transparency asks \u2018can you see what the system is doing?\u2019 while legibility asks \u2018can you understand what the system is doing, what it is authorised t

Question 18

What is B2B agentic commerce?

Accepted Answer

B2B agentic commerce is the domain in which autonomous AI agents represent organisations in procurement, negotiation, fulfilment, and ongoing commercial relationships \u2014 transacting with other organisations\u2019 agents without direct human involvement on either side. Unlike B2C agentic shopping, B2B agentic commerce involves multiple principals, complex delegation chains, and agent-to-agent negotiation where no human is present on either side of the transaction.

Dimension	Traditional UX	Agentic Experience Design (AXD)
Primary material	Attention and affordance	Trust and delegation
User state	Present, navigating	Absent, delegating
Design output	Screens and interfaces	Outcomes and constraints
Temporal model	Session-based	Relationship-based
Success metric	Task completion	Trust calibration

AXD Knowledge Base: Glossary & FAQ for Agentic Experience Design

What is Agentic Experience Design?

How does AXD differ from traditional UX?

Why is trust architecture important for agentic AI?

Key concepts in AXD Knowledge Base | Glossary & FAQ for Agentic Experience Design

How do axd knowledge base relate to agentic commerce?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is agentic commerce?

What is agentic AI?

What is Agentic Experience Design?

What does AXD stand for?

What is a machine customer?

Key Takeaways

References and Citations