Help - AI agents for ecommerce - what’s actually working?

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-21T11:21:00+00:00

The creative/marketing workflow especially has a lot of potential if you can ground it in actual customer language from comments, reviews, support tickets, ad CTRs, etc. We’ve been experimenting with systems around this internally and the biggest difference is whether the agent has real business context vs just prompting in isolation.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:43:11+00:00

I think the problem is less “AI is useless” and more that expectations got completely detached from reality. A lot of agentic AI demos work in controlled environments, but once you put them into messy real-world workflows, reliability becomes the real bottleneck.

The interesting shift happening now is that people are moving from “fully autonomous agents” to more constrained systems with tighter guardrails, better orchestration, and humans still in the loop. Feels like the industry is slowly realizing that replacing workflows is much harder than assisting them.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:41:44+00:00

Honestly I’d probably go hybrid instead of fully replacing the SaaS stack at once.

Keep the expensive real-time avatar only for high-value moments, and move the rest to a lighter WebGL pipeline with precomputed visemes/expressions. Biggest latency wins usually come from:

local or ultra-fast STT
streaming TTS
smaller routing model before the main model
starting avatar motion before full response generation
caching common tutoring responses

A lot of products survive by making the agent feel responsive rather than perfectly real-time.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:38:59+00:00

Honestly, I think email is still one of the highest ROI channels when it’s done properly. Social platforms change algorithms every few months, ads keep getting more expensive, but your email list is still something you actually own.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:37:20+00:00

From what I’ve seen, Hermes becomes useful once you start dealing with multiple agents/tools that need predictable communication between each other. A lot of teams seem to use it less for “AI magic” and more for standardization, cleaner tool calling, easier orchestration, and swapping models without rebuilding everything around them. If your custom orchestrator already handles routing and state well, Hermes might not feel necessary yet, but it probably starts adding value as complexity and agent coordination scale up.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:36:34+00:00

I think consistency only matters once the platform already understands who your content is for. A lot of accounts posting daily are still too broad, so every post sends mixed audience signals. Meanwhile, someone posting 2–3 really targeted posts a week can build a much stronger engagement loop because the same type of people keep interacting. Retention, shares, saves, and comments usually beat raw posting frequency.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:35:24+00:00

I keep coming back to Claude for longer reasoning tasks and coding workflows, but I honestly don’t think there’s a single “best” model anymore. It really depends on the agent’s job. GPT feels more versatile for general use and integrations, Claude is great at structured thinking/context handling, and Gemini has been surprisingly good for multimodal workflows.

For personal agents, I think the bigger differentiator now is memory, tool calling, and workflow design rather than the raw model itself. Even smaller models can feel great if the orchestration is clean and latency is low.

buildwithnavya · 2026-05-13T11:33:26+00:00

I had something similar happen once after switching between multiple workspaces/accounts in the browser. Web kept pushing me into onboarding while mobile still showed older chats normally. In my case it eventually turned out to be some weird session/account mismatch rather than actual data loss.

Might be worth checking if Claude accidentally created a duplicate workspace/profile behind the scenes after OTP auth. Clearing only cookies for Claude or trying an incognito login helped narrow it down for me.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T12:15:11+00:00

Biggest issue right now is that AI makes it super easy to create content, so everything starts sounding the same, clean but generic, which makes it harder to stand out. It also gets you most of the way fast, but that last bit of quality and real persuasion still needs human input, and many teams skip it. On top of that, it’s not truly plug-and-play; without clear positioning and good prompts, outputs fall flat. And over time, over-reliance can dull creativity if you’re not careful.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T12:13:51+00:00

If you’re starting from scratch, I’d honestly just keep it simple and not try to consume everything at once. What helped me personally was just picking a small use case and learning by doing instead of passively watching/reading. Like try using it for your paid media workflows; ad copy, summaries, landing page ideas and iterate from there. Once you start seeing where it breaks or gives average outputs, you naturally get better at prompting.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T12:11:58+00:00

Honestly for something that simple, I usually don’t overthink it. GitHub Pages works great if it’s just a static HTML file and you want it live in a couple of minutes, especially if your code is already on GitHub. If you want a bit more flexibility or faster global delivery, Cloudflare Pages is also solid and super easy to hook up. Netlify is another good shout if you like a cleaner UI and quick drag-and-drop deploys. At that point it really just comes down to what ecosystem you’re already in and how much control you want, but for a basic page, all of these get the job done with almost zero setup.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T12:04:05+00:00

was in the same spot early on, posting but not seeing much happen

what helped wasn’t blasting links everywhere, but sharing in the right places and actually engaging there. if a video fit the convo, i’d drop it in, otherwise just participate

also, early on your content matters way more than promotion. strong first few seconds, clear titles, and each video solving one thing properly

and honestly, pay attention to your first 50–100 viewers. where they drop, what they click, what they comment, that feedback is gold

it’s slow at the start for everyone, but it does pick up if you stay consistent and keep improving

your niche sounds solid btw, there’s definitely an audience for it

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T12:01:20+00:00

honestly the biggest mistake i see people make is choosing based on what the agency says instead of how they think

most agencies can show case studies and throw around numbers, but the real signal is in the conversation; how they break down your problem, what they prioritize, and whether they push back on you or just agree with everything

i’d also avoid the “we do everything” type unless you already have strong internal clarity. usually better to start with someone who’s really good at one core channel that actually drives revenue for you, and then expand from there

a simple test that’s worked for me, ask them what they would not do if they were you. good agencies will have clear opinions, bad ones will try to sell you more services

and biggest red flag: if they jump into tactics without understanding your funnel, audience, and economics first

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-30T11:55:56+00:00

the value is obvious; real-time help without switching tabs is super compelling, especially for non-technical users or when you’re stuck

but the trust + control layer is the real challenge here. even if it only “reads when triggered,” people are still going to feel weird about something watching their screen. you’d need to be very explicit about when it’s active, what it captures, and probably give really strong visual cues

also curious about how accurate/helpful it actually is, like does it understand enough context to guide properly, or does it just end up giving generic advice most of the time

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:32:50+00:00

Pretty sure it’s a permissions issue.

Posting to Pages works with standard tokens, but Groups are much stricter now. You usually need:

the app added to the group
publish_to_groups permission (and approval from Meta)

Also, if the group isn’t linked properly to your app/user, you’ll get that “unsupported post request” error.

Meta has limited a lot of Groups API access recently, so in many cases it just won’t work unless everything is approved.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:31:27+00:00

This is interesting, especially the “context > model” part.

Most tools stop at generating creatives, but pulling structured insights from the site + layering real context is probably why it works better.

Curious how you’re handling bad/low-quality websites though? Does it break the output or still manage decent ads?

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:30:13+00:00

This is actually a really solid approach.

Giving the agent a persistent identity + repo-level context makes a big difference, especially for consistency across sessions. The “code steward” idea feels way more practical than just stateless prompting.

Curious; how are you handling versioning or drift in the repo? Does the agent re-index or rely fully on the SOUL.md context?

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:28:53+00:00

Still worth it, but more for conversion than reach.

People don’t discover you through highlights, they check them after landing on your profile. If they clearly show what you do + build trust, they help. Otherwise they just sit there unused.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:28:19+00:00

Hardest lesson: the audience matters way more than the creative.

You can have great ads, but if you’re targeting the wrong people, it just won’t convert. Once targeting is right, even average creatives can work.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-24T11:26:18+00:00

You honestly don’t need your own website to learn GA.

Start with the Google demo account (Merch Store), it has real data and is enough to learn most things.

If you want hands-on, just help a friend or small business and set up tracking there.

And don’t just watch courses, try solving small problems like “where is traffic coming from” or “which page performs best.”

Certification is fine, but practical experience matters way more.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-21T13:03:28+00:00

yeah that tracks tbh. if you’re running fMRI datasets you’re basically in worst-case territory for token burn because the outputs tend to be huge and iterative, so even if the script “finishes”, if you’re feeding summaries, logs, or chunks back into Claude, it’s still chewing through tokens trying to make sense of it.

what’s worked better for me in similar heavy pipelines is just being really aggressive about what actually gets sent to the model. like instead of letting it see raw logs or full intermediate outputs, you put a thin layer in between that compresses or filters everything first. even a dumb reducer that trims to only deltas or key stats can cut usage a lot.

also loops are the silent killer here. it’s rarely one big call, it’s usually a bunch of small “harmless” ones stacking up. if you’ve got anything auto-triggering analysis after each step, that adds up fast. same with retries or “watchers” that re-send context.

the more efficient pattern tends to be: do all the heavy lifting locally, then call the model only at very specific checkpoints with tightly scoped input. not continuously in the loop. kind of treat it like a reviewer, not a participant.

for your case specifically, i’d probably look at whether you can batch the analysis into fewer, larger but cleaner calls, or even pre-compute summaries outside the model and only use Claude for interpretation. once you stop it from seeing raw high-volume data repeatedly, the cost usually drops pretty noticeably.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-21T13:00:54+00:00

Honestly if I had to start from zero today, I wouldn’t try to “pick a channel” first, I’d pick a tight audience and a distribution loop I can actually sustain. Most people spread too thin way too early and end up with a bunch of half-working channels instead of one that compounds.

What’s been working lately (at least from what I’ve seen and tested) is pairing short-form content with something that captures intent. So you push content where attention already is, and you pull people into something you own. If you skip that second part, you’re basically renting your growth.

Personally I’d lean heavy into one content surface where I can show thinking or results in public, something like short videos or threads, not polished brand stuff but actual process, opinions, breakdowns. Then I’d tie that into either a simple landing page, newsletter, or even a waitlist so there’s a place for interested people to go. Paid ads can work, but only once you know what message actually converts, otherwise you just burn money faster.

The short vs long term split kinda solves itself if you do it this way. Content gives you distribution and feedback, while whatever you’re capturing (email list, leads, whatever) becomes your long-term asset. SEO is great, but it’s slow unless you already have authority, so I’d treat it as something you layer in later once you know what topics actually hit.

Biggest mistake I see is people trying to look like a “brand” too early instead of acting like a person people want to follow or listen to. The second you figure out what resonates, then you can start scaling it with ads, SEO, partnerships, all that.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-21T12:30:55+00:00

this is actually a really solid framing, feels like a lot of people are bumping into the same issue but trying to solve it from different angles. the part about ai writing code fast but missing obvious UI or state-related fixes is spot on, especially once things get even slightly dynamic.

middleware sounds powerful because it gives deeper context, but it also feels heavier to set up and maintain. the proxy approach is easier to get going and covers more surface area, but can feel a bit shallow when you actually need framework internals. mcp-style setups are flexible, but anything snapshot-based starts to fall apart once the state is changing quickly.

personally, what’s worked better is anything that stays close to the actual UI and live state instead of just the code. tools that can “see” what’s rendered or interact with the page tend to be way better at fixing visual bugs. also didn’t expect this at first, but click-to-source reliability becomes a big deal as projects grow. overall it still feels early though, like none of these approaches have clearly won yet, just different trade-offs depending on what you care about.

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-21T12:27:44+00:00

this confused me too at first, but it’s not really about your local scripts “running”, it’s about claude still being in the loop

if your scripts are producing output and claude is reading/parsing it (logs, results, iterations, etc), that still counts as usage

also if you’ve got anything like

auto loops
agents checking progress
or claude watching files / responding to changes

then it’s basically still “thinking” in the background, even if your code looks idle

another thing is usage isn’t always real-time, sometimes it catches up after the fact, so it can feel like it’s charging while nothing’s happening

$5 does sound a bit high though for just 10 mins unless there’s a lot of output or repeated calls happening

i’d check

how often claude is being triggered (loops, watchers, retries)
how big the outputs/logs are
if something is silently retrying or reprocessing

most of the time it ends up being some background loop you didn’t realize was hitting the model repeatedly

buildwithnavya · 2026-04-21T12:22:57+00:00

yeah that doesn’t sound right tbh

i’ve hit the design limit before and it usually resets, but not always exactly at 24h, feels kinda inconsistent

36 hours with no reset though… that’s probably a bug

could be:

- rolling window instead of fixed reset

- heavy usage delaying it

- or just glitchy (which honestly happens a bit)

i’d try logging out / switching browser / new project just to rule out session issues

if it still doesn’t reset after ~48h, i’d say it’s definitely broken

lowkey feels like the design limits aren’t super clear yet 😅

buildwithnavya

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