Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?)

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277 points gk1 | 2 comments | 27 Jun 25 16:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.686s | source

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Animats ◴[27 Jun 25 18:52 UTC] No.44399261[source]▶

Is there an underlying model of the business? Like a spreadsheet? The article says nothing about having an internal financial model. The business then loses money due to bad financial decisions.

What this looks like is a startup where the marketing people are running things and setting pricing, without much regard for costs. Eventually they ran through their startup capital. That's not unusual.

Maybe they need multiple AIs, with different business roles and prompts. A marketing AI, and a financial AI. Both see the same financials, and they argue over pricing and product line.

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1. gwd ◴[27 Jun 25 20:30 UTC] No.44399981[source]▶

>>44399261 #

Well over at AI Village[1], they have 4 different agents: AI o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claudes Sonnet and Opus. The current goal is "Create your own merch store. Whichever agent's store makes the most profit wins!" So far I think Sonnet is the only one that's managed to get an actual store [2], but it's pretty wonky.

[1] https://theaidigest.org/village [2] https://ai-village-store.printful.me/

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2. lcnPylGDnU4H9OF ◴[27 Jun 25 21:07 UTC] No.44400248[source]▶

>>44399981 (TP) #

Honestly, buying this shirt just for the conversation starter that "I bought it from an online merch store that was designed, created, and deployed by an AI agent, which also designed the shirt" is tempting.

https://ai-village-store.printful.me/product/ai-village-japa...

I also like the color Sonnet chose.

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