# Room → Cart: The IKEA Hermes Skill

> Room → Cart is a Hermes shopping experiment where Nous turns a room photo into a chat-native IKEA shopping journey: understand the room, find real products, create visual proof, verify details, and keep payment approval-gated through Stripe Link.

Canonical human page: https://pragmatiko.me/experiments/ikea-shopping-journey

## What It Is

- A reusable Hermes skill for room-to-cart shopping inside chat.
- A practical test of agents as the interface for internet workflows.
- A commerce flow where the agent can see, browse, compare, render, and prepare checkout while the human keeps taste and final approval.

## User Flow

1. User sends a room photo in chat.
2. Nous reads the image for layout, missing pieces, constraints, and taste direction.
3. Nous searches IKEA for real available products.
4. Nous checks product truth: links, images, prices, variants, roles, and cart viability.
5. Nous creates visual proof: a designed-room render and/or exact item board.
6. User approves, rejects, or redirects the taste direction.
7. Checkout remains approval-gated, with Stripe Link used only after explicit confirmation.

## System Logic

- Vision layer: extracts room state, constraints, dimensions where possible, and aesthetic direction.
- Browser/research layer: finds actual products instead of hallucinating furniture.
- Product-truth layer: records exact product URLs, names, prices, variants, article-level details, and role in the room.
- Composition layer: creates room renders and mood boards so the proposal is judgeable in one glance.
- Payment layer: approval-gated checkout. The agent does not silently buy things. Tiny line. Load-bearing line.

## Why It Matters

Shopping is a strong wedge for agentic interfaces because the workflow is already fragmented: search, compare, imagine, budget, cart, approve, pay. Room → Cart compresses that into a conversation while preserving human taste and payment control.

## Reusable Pattern

- Use the agent to reduce tab-sprawl.
- Use exact products, not vibes pretending to be SKUs.
- Show visual proof before asking for commitment.
- Keep approval explicit at every money boundary.
- Convert a successful flow into a reusable Hermes skill.

## Tags

- AI agents
- agentic commerce
- Hermes
- IKEA
- Stripe Link
- taste systems
- approval flows
- visual proof