“The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.” – Charles Eames
❓ What You’ll Learn
- Why are agents that text you first signing users fast?
- Which stores will win agent-placed orders?
- How do proactive agents charge for unprompted work?
- Who pays when agents suggest purchases?
💎 Why It Matters
When an agent suggests what you need before you search, it picks which store gets the order.
🔍 Problem
You have more to track than you can remember: the renewal that charges next week, the reply you owe a client.
💡 Solution
AI agents that know what you want and act before you ask.
🏁 Players
Proactive AI Agents
- Muse • Meta’s agent that sends suggestions without you asking.
- Dots • ChatGPT agents that research on their own.
- Gemini Spark • Google’s agent that flags hidden fees.
Texting Agents
- Instinct • Texts or calls you first.
- Poke • Assistant inside Apple’s Messages for Business.
- Tomo • iMessage coach for food and budgets.
Email Assistants
- Fyxer • Drafts email replies before you open them.
- Superhuman • Grammarly’s assistant that drafts replies anywhere.
- Town • Suggests automations from how you work.
Family Assistants
- Skylight • Wall calendar that reads school flyers.
- Ollie • Books appointments without your passwords.
- Norton Family Assistant • Gen Digital’s agent for parents.
Agent Verification Tools
- Cloudflare • Lets sites allow or block signed agents.
- HUMAN Security • Shows merchants every agent session.
- Akamai • Ties each agent to a real person.
Agentic Commerce Tools
🔮 Predictions
- Brands will pay to appear in suggestions an agent makes on its own.
- OpenAI’s ads hit a $1B ads run rate in under 200 days.
- Meta is exploring commerce revenue for its ad-free agent.
- Apple will ship a Messages agent first.
- Its rebuilt Siri already reads Messages, Mail and Notes, so only the first move is missing.
- Apple approved Poke on Messages on Messages for Business, so people already take texts from an agent there.
- Consumer agent plans will charge for unprompted work.
- Martin sells proactive action tiers as separate plans.
- OpenAI’s always-on agents bill against plan allowances.
- Salesforce paid $3.6B for Fin, a business agent that charges $0.99 per resolution.
☁️ Opportunities
- Launch a coach for one goal, like marathon training or sobriety.
- Astrocade pays $100 when a game is picked for its feed and some creators earned over $700 in a month.
- Creators get play analytics from launch day, so you can see what lands and remake it.
- Fix Shopify brands’ product data so shopping agents pick their products.
- OpenAI shut in-chat checkout after about 30 Shopify merchants went live, with bad product data a major cause.
- ReFiBuy serves Steve Madden and Azoma serves L’Oréal and Unilever, so smaller brands go unserved.
- Run a morning texting agent for realtors that names which past clients to call.
- Structurely charges about $500 monthly for an AI that texts new leads.
- Compass is building for 83,000 agents, leaving independent agents out.
- Offer founders an assistant with human backup for the tasks the agent can’t finish.side a free browser game built with AI.
- Pieter Levels built a browser flight game with AI coding tools and reported $1 million in annualized revenue 17 days later.
- The money came from brands buying planes and billboards in the game and fell to $0 a month by mid-2026, so build for an audience that returns weekly.
🏔️ Risks
- Rogue Actions • One email or purchase your agent sends without approval can lose you a user.
- Store Blocks • Expect big stores to block your shopping agent: Amazon blocked Muse 12 days after launch.
- Channel Lockout • Expect your chat app to ship its own agent: Meta put Muse inside WhatsApp.
🔑 Key Lessons
- The agent that spots a need first picks which store gets the sale, so fix agent-readable product data before rivals do.
- Ship the finished task: ChatGPT Pulse shut after 9 months while Fyxer drafts replies before open.
🔥 Hot Takes
- The group chat is the app store. Agents join like a friend.
- The next Google is the agent that suggests first.
😠 Haters
“I’m not handing an AI my email, card and passwords.”
Then pick an agent that uses its own accounts, not yours. Wajo gives its agent its own email, phone number and a single-use card and Ollie books through its own secure browser, so your passwords stay with you.
“Meta and OpenAI give these agents away for free. Why would anyone pay a startup?”
People pay for one job a free agent does worse, like drafting email replies for professionals. Fyxer grew to $35M a year doing that.
“A free agent works for its advertisers. It’ll buy whatever pays Meta most.”
Meta may earn from shopping through its Muse agent, so it has reason to favor sellers who pay. Pay for an agent that works for you, like Tomo, Howie or Fyxer.
🔗 Links
- Noah Shinn: Building Instinct, the Personal Agent • Instinct’s founder on an agent that texts you first.
- Introducing Ambient Agents • Why an agent should act on events and only ping you to notify, ask or review.
- How Ollie AI Is Using AI to Solve the Mental Load • Ollie’s co-founder on a family agent that texts shared morning plans.
📈 What else?
Trends PRO #0185: Proactive AI Agents has more insights.
What you’ll get:
- 50 Players (194% more)
- 8 Predictions (167% more)
- 8 Opportunities (100% more)
- 5 Risks (67% more)
- 4 Key Lessons (100% more)
- 4 Hot Takes (100% more)
- 8 Links (167% more)
With Trends Pro you’ll learn:
- (📈 Pro) Which store hands checkout to its own agent inside ChatGPT?
- (📈 Pro) Which kind of agent will be the first startup to pass $100M a year?
- (📈 Pro) Which free agent you text raised $1 billion?
- (📈 Pro) Which texting agent startup was bought by a coding company?
- (📈 Pro) Why do merchants let over 90% of AI bot traffic through without knowing what it buys?
- (📈 Pro) Which 3.5 million-user WhatsApp agent shows the opening in Latin America?
- (📈 Pro) Where can an inbox agent sell while US agents stay out?
- And much more…
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