Faaris

@henrylabs

[Faaris @faariszh]

3/ Capitulate to my army of sneaker botters I’m building

[angela strange @astrange]

This is just the beginning of the agent/data wars: Amazon cuts off Muse. Every platform who has done the hard work of aggregating users is trying to figure out how not to become “dumb pipes”. Do they:

1/ Try to block the agents — but risk pissing off their customers — in favor of only their own agentic experience
2/ Strike BD deals to at least extract $$ from new mode of agentic interaction that accesses their data/platform
3/ …something else??

[Nicolas Bustamante @nicbstme]

The most insightful thing I read about technology eleven years ago was @benthompson’s Aggregation Theory. Amazon blocking Muse is another perfect example.

Customers want one agent that knows them and can get things done. The platforms being aggregated want the opposite. They want to own the customer relationship, not become interchangeable suppliers behind someone else’s interface + protect their ad business.

Imagine groceries: Your agent can compare Amazon, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber Eats, then route every order to the best option. Amazon can block that access because it is a gigantic company. But smaller players have every incentive to offer agents a clean API and a seamless experience.

If Instacart embraces agents while Amazon blocks them, the agent will increasingly route demand to Instacart. Customers will be happy, and Amazon will eventually face the dilemma: keep protecting the relationship, or match the better value proposition.

This will be the defining tension of the agent economy: aggregators realizing they are now being aggregated.

Amazon will push its own assistant, of course. But a vertical Amazon agent will struggle against a horizontal agent that already knows my email, calendar, preferences, memories, and entire life context.

Many companies will want to become the aggregation layer. Very few actually can.

[Faaris @faariszh]

@dwr Yes and yes, but there’s more to it than just mouse movement patterns

Antibot/fraud have become extremely sophisticated thanks to sneaker botters (like myself)

[Philip Qiu @PhilipQiu5]

Elon larping as a sneaker-botter was not on my bingo card for 2026

[Faaris @faariszh]

Bro’s never run an automated checkout in his life

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@buccocapital Amazon won’t be able to tell whether the buyer is a human or an AI acting on their behalf if access is via the user’s IP address & cookies

[Philip Qiu @PhilipQiu5]

the world is catching onto the henry labs thesis

[Faaris @faariszh]

Meh

Amazon banned Muse because it could see Muse

Merchants will build agent integrations the day agents are already checking out and they cant tell which orders are agents. Not before

[David Pawlan @DavidPawlan]

I got a fraud alert from my credit card company trying to purchase with Instinct via Amazon last night

Instinct has my Amazon credentials + CC in the vault and it was still flagged as fraud...

I then wake up this morning and see Amazon has banned Muse, so they’re clearly cracking down

Browser use is a band-aid solution here

The future of agentic commerce needs to be first-party vendor integrations that prioritize identity & security

It will be a meaty challenge to work with each vendor, one by one, to ensure their infra is ready to expose their inventory to agents...but this opportunity seems massive

[Faaris @faariszh]

Let the stealth games begin

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Amazon cuts off Muse.

While I am bullish Meta and Muse, I think many people are overlooking the digital knife fight that’s about to occur

Nobody wants to get commoditized or layered here. Let the games begin

[Faaris @faariszh]

Sneaker twitter solved this shit 10 years ago

[cat @catheryn_li]

everyone talking about muse but instinct mogging here

[Faaris @faariszh]

@18pairsonkith Nah fr

[Faaris @faariszh]

There’s a huge moat in getting around anti bot/fraud

There’s a reason instinct and other agents for example can’t checkout everywhere despite it claiming to be able to do so

[signüll @signulll]

browser use is a commodity tool. & at some point it’ll be quite useless for two reasons (top websites if they care to survive will need to introduce agent tools directly & the web is extremely top heavy, 98% of traffic goes to ~100 domains).

there is no secret sauce to logging into a website to complete a task & no durable moat in our agent can open chrome, log in, click buttons, & submit a form.

i have written about this a while now (you can search my posts).

[Faaris @faariszh]

@sandylikesfrogs @getoffprint

[Faaris @faariszh]

I think everyone forgets why sneaker releases became raffles

Merchants couldnt beat us at checkout so they changed the game

[18pairsonkith @18pairsonkith]

You’re not dumb. You’re just lazy.

non sneaker folks discovering proxies for the first time in 2026

the bar couldn’t be lower

[Faaris @faariszh]

@siddharthwv Strongly disagree you have to completely distance urself from everyone

U can fit a lot of socialization into just one Saturday a week

Not that deep

[Faaris @faariszh]

Nothing has replaced the feeling of watching a task list go green at 10:00:03

[Faaris @faariszh]

@dasmersingh @link @henrylabs 🤝

[Faaris @faariszh]

Everyone should check out @useallowance

Million times better shopping experience than other iMsg agents

[dasmer @dasmersingh]

Allowance has partnered with Stripe @link! You can now shop with Alfie using more of your favorite cards, including your Chase Sapphire and Amex Platinum.

With @henrylabs, we’ve also gone from 9 to 90 stores in just two weeks. More coming.

Any card. Anywhere. That’s the goal.

Text Alfie: [phone]

[Faaris @faariszh]

@dasmersingh @link @henrylabs 🤝

[0xdotdot @0xdotdot]

Sneaker twitter was so ahead of the curve.

Normies are discovering Privacy card in the big 2026 😳