I Gave My AI Agent $25 and Told It to Buy Me a Gift. Here's How Far It Got.

Giving an AI agent real money and a shopping task reveals the current limits of agentic commerce. With $25 and a virtual debit card, my agent successfully browsed stores, compared products, and got to checkout, but struggled with CAPTCHAs, dynamic pricing, and stores that block automated browsers. The experiment shows that AI shopping agents are closer than most people think, but the "last mile" of e-commerce (authentication, anti-bot measures, payment confirmation) is where they still fail. For store owners, this means making your store AI-agent-friendly is a real competitive advantage.