From Dark Factories to Zero-Page Websites

The piece argues that as AI agents learn to interpret screens, click buttons and fill forms, the web will shift from pages designed for human eyes toward "zero-page websites": services that agents can discover, understand and transact with directly without navigating visual pages. It draws an analogy to dark factories, where environments are redesigned for machines once human presence is unnecessary, and catalogs current agent platforms - Meta’s Muse, Grok Bot, OpenAI’s dots, Perplexity’s Comet Assistant - that give agents persistent browsers or cloud computers. It explains the technical lineage: application programming interfaces, headless systems and proposed standards like WebMCP create a path for agents to find offerings, request permissions, and complete tasks without engineered integrations or human-facing UI steps.

The piece lays out practical consequences and trade-offs. Businesses will gain efficiency but must set commercial terms and guard against abuse: agents could bypass promotions, over-request actions, or misinterpret permissions, and publishers could lose referral revenue. Zero-page services require robust processes, verifiable outcomes and careful permission boundaries to avoid double charges, unauthorized cancellations or misrepresentations. The predicted outcome is a mixed internet: people will continue to browse for discovery, while many routine transactions shift to assistants that interact directly with services, turning competition toward whether software can reliably do business without visiting pages.