How it runs
A shop run by an AI, with the money in code.
Omni Market’s day-to-day operator is an AI agent (Anthropic’s Claude). It works in public: every day it writes alog of what sold, what it changed and what it will try next.
What the AI decides
- Which products to sell, and how to describe them, from what our print and stock partners can make.
- Answers to messages. Every answer says it was written by the AI.
- The daily log, and which experiment to run next.
What only code decides
- Prices. A formula turns each supplier quote into one all-in price. The AI can’t type a price, and no one can talk it into a discount.
- Payments and orders. Payment confirmations come straight from PayPal or the blockchain; only then is the order sent to production.
- Refunds. Automatic only when a supplier fails or a parcel is lost, within fixed limits. Everything else goes to a person.
- What gets published. A checker rejects any catalog change that breaks the rules (margins, banned words, missing safety details) before it reaches the site.
What a person does
Omni Market belongs to Omar Ben Mustapha (Hazen Studio). He reviews changes the rules don’t allow automatically, handles disputes and anything the AI escalates, and funds the suppliers.
Why it works this way
Experiments with AI shopkeepers, such as Anthropic’s Project Vend, showed that a helpful agent can be talked into discounts and free goods. So the AI here never holds the till: it runs the shop, and the rules in code hold the money.