Typing what you want is only the beginning. Intent is designed around helping you fulfil that request, with control over when a merchant learns who you are.
The Intent model below describes the intended service. This MVP demonstrates matching and fictional purchase commitments.
01 · The starting point
The same sentence can start very different journeys.
“I want a 55-inch OLED television under $2,000, available in-store in Kelowna.”
Search Experience today
Find places to look.
Enter your wordsDescribe what you are looking for.
Explore resultsFollow links and, in an advertising-supported experience, sponsored placements.
Do the comparisonVisit merchants and check which options meet your needs.
The catch for you as a customer
In advertising-supported search, merchants pay for sponsored visibility and the chance to win your click. A prominent ad can catch your eye before you've established whether the offer meets your needs.
You still do the work: compare prices, check the details and separate a persuasive placement from a suitable purchase. Sponsored prominence is not a best-fit score; ordinary search results are ranked separately.
Define what mattersReview your requirements and preferences before proceeding.
See how well each offer fitsFind products and services that match what you asked for, with a clear explanation of what fits and what doesn't.
Review merchants and their offersCompare the offers, prices and merchant reviews. A score close to 100 means a very close match to your request as Intent understood it. Review that interpretation and use the demo's advanced settings to adjust what matters to you. The score describes the fit of the offer, not the quality of the merchant.
Engage the merchantChoose the offer you want to take forward. If you decide to buy, you issue a purchase order to your chosen merchant.
These are simplified journeys. Search and conversational tools can also compare products. The distinction is the customer relationship, disclosure rules, and incentives behind the service—not the presence of a text box.
02 · The search we know
Search finds pages. Merchants compete to be found.
Search works: it helps us discover useful information and places to shop. But finding a relevant page is different from establishing that a particular product meets every condition in your request.
Keyword search: match your words to pages
Your sentence becomes search signalsWords such as “55-inch”, “OLED”, “television” and “Kelowna” help identify relevant pages.
The merchant prepares a page to be foundProduct wording, titles and descriptions help the search service understand and index the page. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps merchants pursue visibility for the searches they want to attract.
The search service ranks indexed contentYour words are compared with page content and other relevance signals. Modern search also interprets meaning and context; it is not just literal keyword matching.
You inspect the resultsA page can mention the right words without offering the right product at your price, in your location, through your preferred shopping experience.
The merchant seeks visibility. You still have to establish suitability.
Customer-led Intent
Describe what you want↓See offers that fit your request↓Review merchants and their offers↓Choose who to engage
Set your budget, describe what you need and choose how you want to shop. Compare each offer against that request, see where it falls short and know which details the merchant hasn't provided.
The merchant competes to meet your needs. You choose who to engage.
Sponsored links add a second incentive: paid visibility.
On advertising-supported search pages, merchants can also compete for labelled sponsored placements. Ad selection considers relevance as well as commercial factors such as bids. What attracts your attention is therefore not solely a comparison of which product best meets your request.
This is the bias in incentives we want to make visible: merchants work to win your visit, while you work to find the right purchase. Sponsored placement can divert attention from a better-fitting option. That does not mean every ad is unsuitable or that paying for an ad improves the merchant's organic search ranking.
Matching words is not the same as meeting conditions.
For example, a page can contain “55-inch OLED” and “Kelowna”, but its television may cost $2,299. Your request said under $2,000. In the Intent demo, that product fails the required budget condition regardless of its page wording or advertising budget.
The commercial milestone is a purchase commitment.
The proposed registry fee is linked to merchant acceptance of a purchase order, rather than paid placement. The demo neither calculates nor collects fees.
About this comparison
This is a simplified comparison with advertising-supported web search. Search serves users as well as merchants, and providers use different ranking methods. Intent's proposition is to put the consumer's stated conditions at the centre of the comparison, with no paid match placement.
Check the fit before you chooseRead why the offer matches, check the price and review the merchant. If the results don't reflect what you meant, adjust your request or its advanced settings and compare again.
Choose whether to buyWhen you're ready, issue a purchase order to your chosen merchant. This is the purchase step, not simply a request for more information. You can keep comparing without issuing a PO.
Let the merchant review your orderOnly after the PO is issued are your details disclosed to that merchant. They can accept or decline and complete any identity and payment checks needed to proceed. Issuing a PO does not make a payment.
The MVP lets you try this with fictional offers and simulated purchase orders. No real purchase or payment obligation is created.
Explore privately. Share your identity only after a purchase order.
In the intended Intent service, the customer is not disclosed to merchants during initial discovery and comparison. Issuing a purchase order (PO) is the boundary: disclosure to the selected merchant happens only after that step.
1
Describe & refine
Your needs guide the request.
Customer undisclosed
2
Compare & choose
Review relevant options and decide whether to proceed.
Customer undisclosed
3
Issue the PO
You make a purchase commitment to the selected merchant.
You initiate the handoff
4
After the PO
Disclose transaction details to the selected merchant, including identity checks where needed.
Selected merchant only
At that stage, the merchant can establish who they are doing business with and complete the checks needed to arrange payment and fulfilment. These may include know-your-customer (KYC) checks where applicable. A PO is a commitment, not proof of payment.
A request is not an invitation to bombard you with advertising.
Initial discovery does not hand merchants your identity or contact details. You control the decision to move into a transaction.
04 · A different foundation
Distributed, like DNS in principle.
Intent is designed as a distributed discovery network. Like the idea behind the Internet's domain name system (DNS), responsibility can be shared across independent authorities. Participating merchants remain responsible for the product and service information they provide.
Products & services from merchantsProducts & services from merchantsProducts & services from merchants
Conceptual view: your request helps find products and services across a distributed network. This is not a customer-identity broadcast or a map of the internal implementation.
The DNS comparison explains the distribution of responsibility. It does not mean Intent is ordinary DNS, or that DNS itself provides the privacy protections described above.
A few natural questions
Could I just type the same request into ChatGPT?
You could use a conversational tool to express your needs or compare possibilities. Intent's proposition is the service behind that conversation: you direct the request, compare what merchants offer and choose who to engage. Its business model supports the purchase, with your identity disclosed only after a PO is issued. A conversational assistant could be an entry point to that service.
What does the merchant gain?
An opportunity to meet a customer's stated needs with a suitable offer. If you choose to buy, the merchant receives your purchase order and can evaluate the transaction, including the identity and payment checks needed to proceed.
What can I try in this MVP?
Describe a television or gardening-tool purchase, review the interpretation, compare explained matches, and create a fictional purchase commitment. Matching has no paid placement. Distributed infrastructure, private identity handling, KYC, real payments, and fees are not implemented. The demo's labelled fictional customer histories are shared demonstration data, not a live privacy service.
