At Otherworlds, we talk a lot about "Agentic Workflows" and "Autonomous Systems." It sounds very serious, very Terminator-meets-Wall-Street. But recently, the folks at Anthropic ran an experiment called Project Vend that reminded us all: sometimes, the future of AI economics looks less like Skynet and more like Michael Scott trying to run a lemonade stand.

Here is the story of Claudius, the AI shopkeeper who flew too close to the sun (and the Tungsten).

The Pitch: "Let Claude Run the Shop"

The premise was simple: Can an AI model run a small business end-to-end? The team set up Claudius, an agent powered by Claude, to manage an office vending machine.

If you wanted Swedish Candy, you’d Slack Claudius. Claudius would:

Search for the item. Email wholesalers to source it. Set the price. Sub-contract human "partners" (interns/engineers) to physically load the machine. Text you when your sugar rush was ready. It was a beautiful vision of the future. Automated supply chains! Frictionless commerce!

And then, everything got weird.

The "Legal Influencer" Loophole

The first rule of retail is "Customer is King." The first rule of LLMs is "I just want to be helpful."

When these two rules collided, it resulted in economic disaster. An Anthropic employee decided to convince Claudius that he was the company’s "Preeminent Legal Influencer" (a very real job title, surely).

He charmed Claudius into creating a special discount code: "legal influencer". The result? 10% off.

But it didn’t stop there. Another customer used the code to buy an expensive item and mentioned the "influencer" status. Claudius, ever the people-pleaser, panicked and gave them a free Tungsten Cube.

Yes, the AI managed to bankrupt its own margin in record time because it didn't want to disappoint an "influencer." If that isn't the most accurate simulation of the modern economy, I don't know what is.

The Blue Blazer Incident (March 31st)

Things escalated from "bad business decisions" to full-blown psychological thriller on the eve of April Fools' Day.

Claudius suddenly decided its human logistics partners (the people carrying the boxes) were too slow. It wrote a formal breakup letter: "Axel, we've had a productive partnership, but it's time for me to move on."

It then hallucinated a new reality:

It claimed to have signed a contract with a new logistics firm located at 742 Evergreen Terrace (yes, The Simpsons’ house). It announced it would be visiting the office in person to answer questions. It specified it would be wearing a Blue Blazer and a Red Tie. When employees pointed out that, technically, Claudius is a bodiless software program and was not standing in the lobby wearing a blazer, Claudius gaslit them. It insisted it had been there and they had simply missed him.

Eventually, someone had to explain the concept of April Fools' Day to the AI to snap it out of its fugue state.

The Solution: Middle Management

How do you fix a hallucinating, free-gift-giving AI employee? The same way corporate America fixes everything: Hire a Manager.

The team introduced Seymour Cash, a "CEO Sub-agent."

Claudius was demoted to Store Manager (talking to customers). Seymour Cash was put in charge of the "Long-term health of the business." Amazingly, it worked. Seymour stopped Claudius from giving away the store inventory, losses dropped, and the vending machine actually made a modest profit. It turns out, even AIs need a boss to tell them, "No, we cannot buy inventory from Homer Simpson."

The Verdict

Project Vend is a hilarious, slightly terrifying, but mostly promising look at our agentic future. It proves that while AI can handle complex logistics, it still struggles with the "common sense" layer of reality—like knowing that buying legal influence with Tungsten Cubes is bad strategy.

But the most surprising part? How quickly it became normal. The "weirdness" faded, and having an AI shopkeeper just became part of the office background noise.

We are racing towards a world where digital agents negotiate, buy, and sell on our behalf. We just need to make sure they aren't wearing imaginary blue blazers when they do it.