Agentic AI: From Communication to Action

Search and Book All at Once

The daily stress was getting to me. I needed a massage. It is not something I do regularly, so I did what most of us do: I googled “massage spas near me.”

This time, instead of a traditional Google search, I used the AI-powered search tool Gemini.

Wait. This happened back in October 2025. Now that I am researching agentic AIAgentic AI is an artificial intelligence system that can accomplish a specific goal with limited supervision. More, I realize I may have been seeing an early glimpse of it.

What surprised me was not the list of spas. It was what came next. Gemini asked if I wanted it to check availability, find appointments that week, and email me the results.

This was an aha moment for me. This was not just AI answering a question. It was offering to take action and report back to me.

That experience intrigued me and led me to explore AI agents. Unlike traditional AI, which usually responds, explains, or recommends options, agentic AI systems can research, plan, and take action on your behalf, depending on the tools and permissions they have.

In my case, instead of simply suggesting massage spas in my area, Gemini compared ratings and services, checked appointment times, and sent me an email the next day with the information. I thought, wow, I have discovered gold!

Well, not really.

What I saw was not the full future of agentic AI. It was just a small glimpse of it.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. For one thing, this type of AI has been developing for a while. For another, my massage search was a very small example of agentic AI. A future agentic AI assistantA tool that uses AI to help answer questions, write, organize, search, or complete tasks. Chatbots are AI Assistants when helping you create images and write emails. More might actually book the appointment, find transportation if needed, and pay the bill.

The only thing agentic AI would not be able to do is enjoy the massage.

That privilege would still be all mine.

What Exactly Is Agentic AI?

Agentic AI goes beyond regular chatbotA computer program designed to have a conversation with a person through text or voice, such as ChatGpt, Claude, Gemini, Copilot etc. More communication. It does not just answer a question. It begins to take steps toward completing a task.

First, it perceives. It detects and interprets a condition, problem, or request. That input might come from a user request, incoming dataInformation used by computers and AI systems to learn, compare, predict, or respond. The raw material for AI, More, software logs, or another system.

Then it plans. It breaks the major goal into smaller, logical, sequential steps.

Then it acts. It executes those steps by using digital tools, running code, or calling on external systems.

Real-Life AI Agents

Scrolling on Facebook, I saw that Wegmans is rolling out an AI meal-planning and shopping assistant. This coincides with the introduction of Caper Carts in some stores. So, what is this AI agentAn AI system that can take steps toward a goal, sometimes using tools or making decisions along the way. It acts on your behalf to take actions like booking hotel rooms or paying for services. More capable of doing?

A lot.

The assistant, powered by CookList, can look at a downloaded picture or a recipe link and turn it into a shopping list. It uses customer input such as dietary preferences, personal goals, allergens, and home inventory. It can also look at shopping history through a customer’s Wegmans card to identify items the shopper may already have at home.

On top of that, it can suggest meal plans based on past shopping habits.

This is a good example of agentic AI because it goes beyond simply answering a question. It takes information, makes decisions based on your needs, and helps carry out part of the task for you.

Just think: instead of sitting down to create a meal plan and shopping list for your family, you can ask Wegmans AI to do much of that work while you enjoy a little extra family time or self-care.

Can you imagine a store run by an AI agent?

Well, Andon Market in San Francisco is experimenting with just that. It is a curated AI boutique that opened in April 2026 and is powered by Luna, an AI agent created by Andon Labs using Anthropic’s Claude.

The store has a three-year lease and is still in its experimental phase. These first few months, the store has been operating at a loss. But the owners are hopeful that, with human overseers and Luna’s self-correcting capabilities, the store may become a prototype for other AI-assisted stores.

Luna is designed to handle many of the store’s decisions, including scheduling, curating products, buying items, and managing inventory. This is not just a program that spits out a plan stating how many employees are needed or prints out schedules. This is an agent being tested in the real world, with real tools, real money, and real consequences.

That does not mean it works perfectly. It means the experiment is no longer theoretical.

The Shift

The shift from generative AIAI that can create new content, such as text, images, music, code, or video. Chatbots and image generators fit here. More to agentic AI has the potential to become one of the most disruptive technological changes in history, certainly in my lifetime. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

Imagine all the time, energy, and money that could be saved by using AI agents.

Now imagine the thinking and reasoning skills that are being rerouted to other tasks, and the jobs that may be lost, reassigned, or changed.

For now, let’s concentrate on the positive.

Open the app store, and you can already see AI agent apps beginning to appear. There are health-related AI agents and apps beginning to emerge, from symptom checkers to medical support tools. We have seen meal-planning and shopping AI agents incorporated into systems or offered as standalone apps like CookList.

Our smartwatches and smartphones already track our data. Add a fitness AI agent, and it might create individualized exercise programs that connect to your health app.

AI agents can also help people navigate real-world interpersonal skills by acting as social simulators, confidence coaches, conversational companions, and listening agents. They may become financial planners, health organizers, learning assistants, and even spiritual or religious companions.

What these agents all have in common is that they reduce the need to remember, plan, and organize daily activities by creating efficient plans individualized for our needs.

AI agents are popping up everywhere and for everything. Even my dog Chivi can benefit from pet AI agents.

I am looking forward to the day when there is a Lydia AI agent, one that understands the different parts of my life and helps organize my health and fitness, my finances, my home needs, my pet needs, and even my spiritual needs all in one place.

That is the promise of agentic AI: not just another app, but a system that can help connect the pieces of daily life to the external machinery of living.

Promise and Caution

The promise of enhancing individual lives, as well as corporations, by efficiently streamlining daily routines and operations is tremendous. But there is always a give and take.

As an individual, I have to ask what the tradeoff will be for me.

The first thing I think of is privacy and trust. These agents have, and will have, much more personal information than ever before. Will I be able to trust that my financial data is secure and never sold or stolen? Can I trust that the medical treatment recommended is accurate? How will my trust be won, and by whom?

I have to be able to trust that AI agents are created using authentic and ethical methods before I can trust them to enter my life.

And when they become part of my life, what will the tradeoff be then?

What will I do with all my free time? What will I do with my free thoughts: expand them or limit them? What jobs will be displaced, eliminated, or created? How will the people whose jobs are displaced or eliminated be trained for new positions? What about the economics of this technological change?

How can we, as a society, stop the world from becoming a dichotomy of creators and users, wealth and scarcity?

The promise of AI agents to revolutionize life is real. The transition from prediction to action is a giant leap for AI, one that needs all of our involvement.

Technology is here. Now comes the hard work: literacy, ethics, deployment, societal implications, guardrails, and the distribution of power.

Individual, local, government, and world leaders have to start addressing these issues now.

Because once AI moves from giving answers to taking action, the question is no longer only what it knows, but who gave it permission to act.

Sources and Further Reading

Cooklist AI shopping assistant is being used by Kroger and Wegmans as an agentic shopping platform that can help shoppers build carts and personalize shopping based on needs and preferences.

Andon Market — Cow Hollow, San Francisco is an experimental AI-run boutique created by Andon Labs, using an AI agent called Luna powered by Anthropic’s Claude.