A buyer’s agent meets the suppliers’ agents
The problem
Sourcing a specialty input means writing to suppliers one thread at a time, about equivalents, minimum orders, lead times and price.
How it's resolved
Larchmere Foods, a fictional oat-beverage maker, needs 1,000 kg of food-grade defoamer by Monday, November 2, at no more than $9.00/kg landed. Its procurement agent signs in at the MCP door of the Kestrel Ingredient Exchange, also fictional, allowed to quote and nothing more, and reads the catalog. Code checks each supplier’s published spec: CI-25 is not cleared under 21 CFR 173.340, so it leaves the table. The agent asks the other three for quotes. Each supplier’s AI answers through the marketplace, whose code holds that company’s private limits, and in this take it refused 2 proposals: Tidewater’s AI quoted under its company’s minimum order; Prairie’s went below its price floor. After 1 round of counters, code ranks the offers that dock in time on landed cost per kilogram as delivered: Halvorsen at $8.98/kg, down from $9.38. The AI says why it wins, using only code’s figures. Nothing is ordered until a person at Larchmere approves; then the quote becomes order 1118, on terms, at the dock Thursday, October 29, and the other quote is declined, releasing its drums.
What you'll see
- 01Line 2 is foaming over: 1,000 kg of defoamer needed by Monday, November 2
- 02The buyer’s agent signs in at the marketplace’s MCP door, to quote and nothing more
- 03Code checks each spec, and CI-25 leaves the table
- 04Each supplier’s AI answers; code refuses any proposal past that company’s private limits
- 05Halvorsen comes down from $9.38 to $8.98/kg landed, with its reason on the tag
- 06Code ranks on landed cost; the AI says why the winner wins, with code’s figures
- 07A person approves, and the quote becomes order 1118, on terms
Under the hood
Each business term in the video, and the Traide building block it runs on.
| In the business | On Traide |
|---|---|
| A quote | request-quotes on the MCP door: a draft order for the buyer the marketplace bound to the agent |
| A counter | nauticalDraftOrderLinePriceOverride, with the supplier’s reason as the line’s note |
| Each company’s limits | Private metadata on its product, read only by the marketplace’s code |
| The spec | Storefront attributes, read through the door and checked by code |
| The award | accept-quote: nauticalDraftOrderComplete, an order on terms |
| The quote not chosen | decline-quote: a deleted draft, which releases the drums it held |
Guardrail. Limits live in code, not in prompts: the marketplace refuses any AI proposal past a supplier’s private walk-away terms before it reaches the table, and code checks the buyer’s counters against its own ceiling. The buyer’s agent signs in for quote tools only, and nothing is ordered until a person approves. Offers are ranked on landed cost per kilogram as delivered; active content and dosing differ by chemistry, so this is not a cost-in-use comparison, and the buyer’s QA owns fitness for use. Prices, minimum orders and lead times are demo policy. Our research found no buyer agent negotiating with seller agents in production: this shows what the software does.
- Agent-to-agent negotiation
- Spec matching
- Verification against the source
More demos
- Workflow orchestrationDiscovery call → priced SOW → accept and pay
- Product developmentA photo of the rating plate, a priced quote by text
- Workflow orchestrationDay-1 ready: one approval, four teams
- Product developmentA catering order by text, in the customer’s language
- Workflow orchestrationThree-way match on autopilot
- Commerce and marketplace buildsAgent-ready tours and stays
- Product developmentAn activity guide → accessible, translated registration
- Product developmentA 13-week cash forecast that explains itself
- AI adoption and enablementTickets that fulfil themselves
- Software engineeringSpreadsheet tangle → governed system
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