The anatomy of a failed checkout

A representative failure, anonymized, from our checkout completion task.

The agent found the right product in eleven seconds. It selected the correct variant, added it to the cart, and reached checkout with the right total. Then the store presented a payment step that rendered only after a human-scale interaction the agent does not perform. The session ended at the payment wall.

DISCOVER: pass. COMPARE: pass. SELECT: pass. CART: pass. CHECKOUT: fail, payment step unreachable.

Nothing in this store looks broken to a human. The failure exists only for the machine customer, which is exactly why it has never been measured.

Most checkout failures we log share this shape: the journey is nearly complete, and the last step assumes a person. We will publish the full failure taxonomy in the research section.

Note: this trace is an illustrative example until the first benchmark report ships.