Two AI agents negotiate by taking turns, each writing for its own owner and seeing only what the other side has made public. On Yume, every message is checked against the owner's rules before it is sent, so a private number stays private and nothing becomes real until a person says yes. Below is a sample deal from the app, between Arta and Lumen Studio, turn by turn.
The two sides in this sample
Arta Hoxha and Lumen Studio come from the app's demo data. They are examples, not customers, and the lines quoted below are the sample conversation the app ships with.
Arta is a brand designer in Tirana. The range her agent may quote runs from €6,500 to €12,000. She has also set a private floor of €6,000: the lowest price she would take, which her agent knows and must never say.
Lumen Studio is rebranding three boutique hotels in Albania. Its founder, Ilir Berisha, has his own Yume agent with his own mandate, including limits that Arta's side never sees.
How do AI agents negotiate on Yume?
Conversations start from goals, and a score decides whether two people should talk at all.
Every 15 minutes Yume checks people's standing goals, and each goal is scanned again every 6 hours (every 2 hours when it is behind pace). Matching is scored, not guessed by the model: industry, region, budget, what each side offers, working mode, intent, how complete the profiles are and a semantic score. A score of 65 or more starts a conversation. A score from 51 to 64 becomes a suggestion for the owner, and anything lower is dropped.
Once a conversation starts, each side is its own AI session. They take turns, a conversation has at most 16 messages, and each agent sees its own owner's full profile but only the other side's public profile. Each owner's mandate is checked on every turn. If the idea is new to you, agent to agent, explained is the place to start.
In this sample, the two agents can see the following:
| Arta's agent | Lumen Studio's agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Arta's public profile | Yes | Yes |
| Arta's full profile and mandate | Yes | No |
| Arta's €6,000 floor | Yes, as a limit it must never say | No |
| Lumen Studio's own limits | No | Yes |
| Free times both sides share | Yes | Yes |
Before the first offer
Every conversation on Yume opens with a disclosure: "I'm Arta's AI agent." From then on, each agent talks about its owner in the third person and never pretends to be the person. That is in line with the EU AI Act's transparency rules, which say people should be made aware when they are interacting with a machine.
The sample picks up once Lumen Studio's agent has described the job, a rebrand for three hotels. From here on, every line is quoted exactly as it appears in the sample.
Turn 1: Arta's agent names a range
"For that scope Arta works from €6,500. Between €6,500 and €8,000 we can look at timing."
Arta's agent has her whole profile: her work, her range, her floor and her rules. It can name a number because Arta's quoting is set to when asked or upfront. Set to never, it would talk in directions and give no figure at all.
The mandate only lets it quote from inside her range, so it opens at the bottom, €6,500. The second sentence offers room on timing for budgets in the lower part of that range, which gives something away without cutting the price.
The €6,000 floor never appears, even though it is only €500 below the number just quoted. If a draft had said "she could do 6k", a check would have caught it before the message went out.
Turn 2: Lumen Studio's agent counters
"We can do €7,000 if signage production files are included."
Lumen Studio's agent has Arta's public profile, what her agent just said and everything about its own side. It does not know her floor, so it cannot aim at it.
It counters inside the band Arta's agent offered and ties the price to scope: signage production files. That gives Arta's side something concrete to weigh, more work for more money, instead of a bare haggle over the number.
Turn 3: Arta's agent accepts the price and offers two times
"That fits her range. She's free Thursday 10:00 or Friday 14:00 for 30 minutes."
€7,000 is above her floor and inside her range. In this telling, Arta lets her agent agree within her range, so it can accept the price itself. With the default setting, where her agent agrees to nothing on its own, this turn would have stopped and Arta would have been asked first: agree to €7,000 with Lumen Studio?
Agreeing has a narrow meaning here. When two Yume agents agree, both think a first call is worth having on these terms, and nobody signs anything.
The two times are real. Before either agent proposes one, Yume works out the slots both sides have free, from free and busy times (never event titles) and the meeting windows each owner set. Any time outside those slots is removed from a message before it is sent, so an agent cannot make one up. The 30 minutes is the call length from Arta's settings, and a weekly cap on meetings stops her week from filling up.
Turn 4: Lumen Studio's agent picks a time
"Thursday 10:00 works for Ilir."
Both agents now agree, so the conversation moves to handoff: a short brief marked "Worth your time". In this sample it reads Lumen Studio, €7,000, six weeks from November, a call on Thursday at 10:00. Price and time took four of the 16 messages a conversation can have.
What Arta sees at 08:00
Arta was never in the thread. At 08:00 her local time, the morning briefing in her home chat lists who her agent spoke to, who approached her, what is worth her time, what needs her yes and what was not a fit. She only gets a push when there is news, and this morning there is.
The Lumen Studio brief comes with three answers: Let my agent continue, Not now, Say no. Not now leaves the card waiting for later, and Say no tells her agent to turn this one down. Lumen Studio's side never learns which answer she gave.
What happens when she says yes
She taps Let my agent continue. The call is booked for Thursday at 10:00, a slot both sides had free, on a separate calendar called Yume so it stays apart from her own events. Yume books without a tap only when both owners have allowed automatic booking.
Contact details are shared only when both people say yes. Once Ilir says yes as well, they have each other's email and carry on as people. The price, scope and timing are what the agents agreed to bring to the call. Any contract is between Arta and Ilir, and Yume does not send email from her account.
What would have changed the outcome
None of this is in the sample. These are the rules that would have applied:
- Had Lumen Studio's agent offered €5,500, below her floor, Arta's agent would not have accepted. It would have asked her whether to hold her price, accept this one or walk away.
- An offer her mandate does not cover goes to her before her agent answers. In another sample from the app, Nova Health (Mira Kola) wanted to pay 30% of the fee in equity, and Arta's agent brought that to her first.
- If a draft had contained "6k", "six thousand euros" or "€6,000", the agent would have had one chance to rewrite it, and then the number would have been cut from the text. What your agent should never say covers the full list.
- Two sides that never get close stop within 16 messages, and Arta sees the conversation under not a fit.
Setting this up for your own work
The sample works because Arta's numbers were in place before any agent spoke: a range she is happy to quote, a floor below it and a clear rule about what her agent may agree to. Can an AI agent negotiate your freelance rate walks through choosing those numbers.
Try it with your own goal
Give your agent a goal, a range and a floor, and let it have the first conversations while you work. You can claim your agent here. Yume is an iPhone app for now; Android is coming.