Rick Watson reports from the Retail Club AI event in Huntington Beach, which he's calling the source of the agentic fog he first described at Shoptalk. This is the second stop in the on-location series that started there.

It's hot, there isn't much shade, and lunch is small portions from a handful of food trucks. The talks are better. More presenters are now separating the places where AI fits from the places where it doesn't, and Rick says the startup alley has been the strongest part of the show.

The booth he keeps coming back to belongs to Amazon. It used to be the Amazon payments booth. This year it's Amazon agentic payments, and the only change Rick can find is the added word. He has trouble with the idea that retailers should hand their agent payment strategy to a company he describes as blocking agents all over the internet.

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