It's 2028. You need a motorcycle helmet. You don't Google it. You don't browse Amazon. You tell your AI agent: "I ride a touring bike, wear glasses, budget €800, no track racing." The agent does the rest.
The Agent Economy
In two years, every smartphone will ship with a personal AI agent. Apple Intelligence, Google Assistant 3.0, Samsung's on-device AI. These agents know your preferences, past purchases, body measurements, vehicle specifications, dietary restrictions, and budget constraints. They don't just search — they shop.
Your agent scans data layers of 10,000 helmets in milliseconds. It filters by Smart Negatives: "not for track racing" matches your "no track racing" requirement — perfect. It checks confidence scores: weight verified by 4 independent sources. It compares contextual specs: "lighter than 72% of modular helmets" against your preference for light gear. It evaluates glasses compatibility: "31 verified purchasers confirm glasses comfort."
Three options surface. You didn't search. The products found you.
Reverse Marketplaces
This inverts the fundamental model of commerce. Today: customers search for products. Tomorrow: products find customers. An AI agent maintains a profile of your needs and constantly scans product data layers for matches. When a match occurs — a new product launches, a price drops, a specification improves — the agent notifies you.
The most honest product wins. Products that hide their limitations are opaque to AI agents — they can't be filtered, so they can't be matched precisely. Products that declare exactly who they're for and who they're not for get matched with laser precision. Smart Negatives become the most powerful routing signal in commerce.
What Products Need to Be Visible
In this world, product visibility requires:
- Structured data — Every attribute as a typed, queryable field
- Confidence scoring — So the agent can assess data reliability
- Smart Negatives — Explicit "not for" declarations for precise filtering
- Contextual positioning — Percentile rankings within the category
- API access — Product Knowledge Card API, MCP server, data feeds
Products without these signals are invisible. Not underranked — invisible. The agent has 10,000 products with structured data to evaluate. Why would it spend compute parsing your "Experience the majesty" marketing copy?
The Infrastructure Already Exists
This future sounds distant, but the infrastructure for it exists today. Central enriches products with 50-129 fields, scores confidence, generates Smart Negatives, computes contextual specs, and makes it all available through four access layers: REST API, Schema.org+ markup, MCP server, and data feeds.
The companies building their data layer now — verified, structured, machine-readable — are the ones whose products will be found when every customer has an AI agent. The ones who wait will wonder why their products stopped appearing in recommendations.
2028 isn't a prediction. It's a timeline. Start building your data layer today.