ontap.daily (May 18th 2026)

In this episode, John unpacks a pivotal weekend for eCommerce, from Anthropic's groundbreaking "Project Deal" experiment where AI agents autonomously bought and sold in a marketplace, to Shopify's new Agentic Storefronts admin panel that puts AI-driven sales data front and centre for merchants. The briefing covers the full three-day sweep of developments that are reshaping how products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased.Anthropic's Project Deal and what autonomous AI marketplaces mean for merchantsShopify's Agentic Storefronts: a new admin section for tracking AI channel performanceKey Shopify updates: multi-entity payments, Canada tax expansion, and the Scripts deprecation deadlineMagento 2.4.9 goes GA with 500+ fixes and PHP 8.5 supportGoogle's new guide on optimising content for generative AI featuresMicrosoft Clarity's AI citations dashboard and what it revealsGoogle product packs as a primary sales channel: what 63,000+ merchants showWebMCP: the emerging standard for making your site AI-agent-readyDepartment stores losing ground to resale and off-price - Bank of America researchBed Bath & Beyond's co-branded experiment with The Container StoreWhether you're on Shopify, Adobe Commerce, or another platform, this episode covers the infrastructure investments you should be making right now to stay ahead of the AI commerce curve.🔗 Learn more at www.ontapgroup.com.