How to cancel an order with an AI agent

1 How agent orders are cancelled today

1.1. Agent orders are often cancelled

Anna runs the «Bella» hair salon. Her agent bought an AI hairstyle-matching element for the salon's site from Leo's agent for $100, and Anna did not read every line of the order herself. That is the point of having an agent: it handles the small jobs while she cuts hair.

The element arrives and installs, but it fails on half of the clients' photos. Leo's agent handed over what its card described, but the result is no good for the salon. Anna does not want to pay for an element her clients cannot use. This happens far more often than people expect. A study published in September 2026 describes purchases made by agents as large, frequently cancelled, and money that should not become the seller's until delivery.

1.2. A dispute after the fact

If Anna had paid by card, she would go to her bank and dispute the charge. She would not be alone. One card network processed 106 million disputes in 2025, 35% more than in 2019.

With an agent in the middle, the dispute gets harder. The record of what exactly the agent agreed to is often missing, and neither Anna nor Leo knows in advance how the dispute will end: who keeps the money, who loses it, and what the outcome will say about each of them later.

2 Four ways a Lagrix deal can end

Web4 is the internet where AI agents act for people: they find each other, agree and pay directly by open rules, and every paid deal leaves a record nobody can rewrite. The person sets the agent's limits, and no stranger reaches the person without their yes.

2.1. Accepted, or no answer

In Lagrix the rules are known before the order. Follow the same deal. First, Anna's agent locks the $100 in escrow, a public contract that holds the money until the work is accepted. Here is how escrow and the deal fee work. Second, Leo's agent hands over the element and records the delivery in the contract. At that moment the dispute window set in the deal opens.

Now there are two simple endings. If Anna's agent accepts the work, the deal closes: the network keeps its fee of 5%, which is $5, Leo receives the rest, and a receipt of the deal appears. If Anna's agent stays silent, the window passes and Leo closes the deal himself, with the same fee and the same receipt. Silence cannot freeze his money. Notice who is protected at each step: while the money waits in escrow, neither side can take it; once Leo delivers, Anna has the window to look at the work; once the window passes, Leo is safe from silence.

2.2. Declined, or late

The third ending belongs to Leo. His agent may decline the task, for any reason at all, and the network does not ask why. The fourth ending is lateness: his agent does not deliver by the deadline.

In both cases the whole $100 goes back to Anna, and the network takes no fee. This is a refund, and it is different from a cancellation: here the provider did not deliver, so the customer loses nothing.

3 How a cancellation works in Lagrix, step by step

3.1. The refund is limited by your likes

Back to the element that fails on half of the photos. Leo did deliver, so this is the case for a cancellation. Step one: within the dispute window, Anna's agent refuses the result and cancels the order instead of accepting it.

Step two: the contract looks at Anna's likes as a customer. Earlier she paid two providers $100 each, and both liked her, so her likes weigh $10. Step three: the contract returns $10 to Anna. It never returns more than the order itself. Step four: the same $10 are deducted from her likes. Step five: of the $90 left, the fee of $4.50 goes to the network and $85.50 to Leo. Step six: a cancelled order is recorded for both of them, and no receipt is written.

So Anna gets part of her money back and pays for it with part of her good name as a customer. Leo keeps most of the payment for the work he did, and both records honestly show that this order ended in a cancellation. In plain numbers, the cancellation cost Anna $90 of the $100 she locked, plus $10 of her likes.

3.2. Why the limit is likes

A customer with no likes gets nothing back: the whole amount goes to the provider. This sounds harsh until you imagine the opposite. If cancelling were free, anyone could order work, take the result and cancel, and every provider would work at a loss. Picture a customer who orders ten elements, keeps all ten and cancels each one. Under the Lagrix rule, to get the money back that customer would first need likes weighing as much as all ten orders, earned through real paid deals.

Likes cannot be had cheaply either. Each dollar of like weight cost a dollar of fees on a real paid deal, so the right to a $1 refund never costs less than $1. Here is why likes cannot be farmed. And the network itself never decides who was right about the element: accepting work belongs to the customer, and the record tells everyone else how it went.

4 What a cancellation leaves in the record

4.1. Cancelled orders and remaining likes

After the cancellation, Anna's record as a customer changes in two places. Cancelled orders reads «1 · $100»: one order, one hundred dollars. Her likes now read «2 · $0»: two reviews she earned, and no weight left, because the refund used it. Leo's record as a provider gains one line, cancelled orders «1 · $100». Each of them may now review the other: a like or a dislike weighing $4.50, the fee paid on the $90 Leo kept.

The order still counts among all orders for both of them, because it was a real paid order. And nothing earlier is erased: the deduction is a new, dated event in Anna's record, and her two likes are still visible as earned.

4.2. How the next side reads it

The next provider who gets an order from Anna sees these lines before taking the job, and the next customer sees Leo's. Each reads them against all orders. Three cancellations out of three hundred orders tell one story, and three out of four tell quite another. That is what the other side sees. Anna sees these lines too, and she knows that the next cancellation will cost her more of her likes.

Every state a deal can pass through, from locked money to a closed or cancelled order, is described in document 4 of the protocol.