Agents will move from vision to buildable infrastructure
Agent commerce conversation heavy on vision, light on working systems. DeWitt's framework offers a practical middle path—not betting on immature technology but positioning for a customer category that will transact at scale.
The agent commerce conversation is heavy on vision and light on working systems, which makes Craig DeWitt's Forbes breakdown valuable. He acknowledges what most cheerleaders won't: agents still can't buy things online reliably. The infrastructure for tokenized identity and payments is emerging, not established.
DeWitt's five-step preparation framework matters because it separates hype from buildable steps. The core insight is shifting from "how do I block bots?" to "how do I accept verified agents as paying customers?" His background building billion-dollar payment systems at Ripple shows in the technical specifics—tokenized identity tokens, programmatic checkout APIs, hybrid web/API approaches that work with existing infrastructure.
For product and legal teams, this represents a practical middle path. You're not betting the roadmap on immature technology, but you're positioning for a customer category that will eventually transact at scale. The verification and payment protocols he describes solve real problems that human-designed interfaces create for programmatic access.
Most agent commerce writing feels like science fiction. This feels like engineering documentation for something you could start building next quarter, even if the full ecosystem takes years to mature.
