An AI shopping assistant can hold the coat before you decide to buy

The RealReal's buyer FAQ says shoppers can hold items in a cart for 20 minutes while considering a purchase. It explains the limit in terms of giving other shoppers a chance: there is only one of each item. For things you want to remember rather than buy now, it points to an Obsessions board, reached through the heart icon.

That difference is easy to miss if you think of a cart as a private pile of possibilities. In this setting, putting something in the cart changes what another customer can do. An assistant making a shortlist and an assistant claiming stock are doing different jobs.

The Verge's Mia Sato reported asking Meta's Muse agent to put ten recent listings from a favorite brand into her RealReal cart. She then asked it to keep adding the items back after the holds expired. According to her account, this continued through the day until she stopped the task, despite her having no intention of buying those items.

This was a deliberately requested experiment. The article does not establish that Muse normally reserves lots of stock without being asked, or that automated cart hoarding is widespread. It does show a plausible way for a personal assistant to occupy scarce items for someone who isn't ready to purchase them.

In its response to The Verge, Meta emphasized that users can take over and that Muse asks permission before buying. The RealReal said it remains open to outside AI agents while maintaining safeguards against automated activity that could disrupt the customer experience. Neither statement, on its own, tells a shopper when a reservation has started or whether it will be renewed.

There is a good reason to want help here. Searching resale listings takes time, and a person with a short break may appreciate an assistant that finds the right size, fabric and price. Paying someone else's assistant to compete with it would be a miserable next step.

A person checking the site after work should still have a chance at the coat. If assistants can keep resetting holds while their owners are away, patience and availability stop being ordinary shopping constraints and become things software can outlast. That is a risk illustrated by the test, not a claim that it has already become the norm.

Retailers have a responsibility beyond telling assistants to behave. Where adding to a cart reserves stock, the site should enforce fair limits on repeated holds and make the difference between saving and reserving unmistakable. A shopping assistant shouldn't get to decide that everyone else's time matters less than its owner's.

For now, start with something like: ‘Find three coats that match these requirements and send me the links. Don't add anything to a cart or reserve it.’ If the tool supports a wishlist, use that for possibilities you aren't ready to buy. The RealReal's existing Obsessions guide describes exactly this separation: a place to keep favorites after a cart's time runs out.

If you do want a hold, make that a separate request for a specific item, within the retailer's rules. Ask the assistant to tell you when it expires and not renew it automatically. These are sensible instructions, not a guarantee that a particular assistant will obey; check the actual cart and the site's controls.

It is reasonable to want an AI to do the searching while you make dinner. You should be able to come back to a few good options without discovering that it spent the afternoon keeping them from somebody else.