September 25 Stratechery recap: Amazon’s physical-world counterweight to an agent gatekeeper

Source. “Begun, the Aggregator Wars Have,” September 25, 2026, a Friday Stratechery weekly roundup (not the underlying original update).

What this roundup actually contributes. The short agent section points to the week’s longer essays: Thompson argues that Amazon can block Meta’s Muse from browsing its store because physical fulfillment remains valuable even if its advertising surfaces are abstracted away; Meta would need another merchant, with Walmart suggested. The rest of this roundup concerns GM’s CarPlay reversal, a writer interview and unrelated podcasts. This is a selection guide, not a new field experiment or independent evidence that users completed purchases via agents. For this area it raises a concrete limit to ‘an agent can use every app’: access policy and supplier refusal can defeat the user’s intent despite capable computer use. A maintained agent-built service must track refused external integrations, error recovery and alternatives, not only its generated UI. Connect to the interface/maintenance brief.