138 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY LEVEL 3: Authorize (‘The Supervised Executor’) At level 3, consumers delegate not only actions but also rules. Instead of approving each step, they authorize an agent to execute within clear boundaries. “If groceries are under $120 and arrive Friday 6–8 p.m., place the order.” “If my pre ferred sneakers drop below $80 from merchants I trust, buy them.” The agent then runs the work flow end to end, choosing among eligible options, swapping out-of-stock items for approved sub stitutes, applying loyalty benefits, and escalating to the shopper for approval only when something falls outside the rules. - - - Implications for retailers: To support shoppers at level 3, merchants must make it possible for an agent to pay and act on a customer’s behalf with safety and transparency. That means purchasing authorization that can be limited (by budget, time window, merchant, or category), activity that can be audited (what was bought and why), and actions that can be reversed (easy cancellations, refunds, and overrides when needed). Shopping is not merely about outcomes; it is LEVEL 4: Autonomize (‘The Intent Steward’) At level 4, agents operate against standing goals rather than one-off transactions. For example, “Keep household essentials under $300 per month.” “Maintain my airline loyalty status at the lowest total cost over the course of 2026.” “Make sure we never run out of baby supplies.” The agent continuously monitors needs, anticipates replenishment, com pares options across merchants, and optimizes for longer-term outcomes such as maintaining or achieving a certain loyalty status. The agent then handles the operational follow-through, including changes, returns, and replacements. The shopper becomes episodic, stepping in mainly for meaning ful decisions or exceptions. - - Implications for retailers: Competition at level 4 shifts from winning a single purchase to earning a place in the agent’s ongoing plan. Merchants need deeper integration—especially around loyalty, eli gibility, substitutions, and service guarantees—so agents can reason about trade-offs and execute reliably. Put simply, it’s no longer enough to expose a catalog; retailers must expose the rules and policies that determine what “good” looks like. - LEVEL 5: Networked Autonomy (Multiagents) This forward-looking level is still emerging and points to a world in which commerce becomes agent-to-agent by default. Personal agents won’t just interact with merchant websites; they will negotiate directly with a network of special ized agents that optimize pricing, logistics and delivery, payment authorization, and loyalty pro grams. Ultimately, this will result in multiagent - - marketplaces where intent can be brokered, trust is carried through reputation signals, and transactions are settled through shared proto- cols—enabling “procurement as a service” to run continuously in the background. Implications for retailers: Level 5 will be shaped by those that are already proficient at level 4. Retailers that expose policies, guarantees, and loyalty logic in machine-readable ways will be positioned to influence how these ecosystems route demand. Those that don’t risk becoming interchangeable suppliers competing primarily on price in machine-negotiated flows. HOW THE AUTOMATION CURVE BENDS The automation curve describes what AI agents can do across the shopping experience. It also can help explain the way that delegation can play out in practice and why automation does not unfold evenly across categories, moments, or consumers. In the real world, consumers do not climb the curve uniformly, nor do they aspire to full auton omy in every context across shopping categories. Instead, delegation accelerates where automa tion removes friction without sacrificing meaning. - - Automation Curve