Build a procurement agent that coordinates with vendors

Procurement teams spend a surprising amount of time in email: requesting quotes, chasing purchase orders, checking shipping updates, and asking vendors for missing information. An agent can handle that coordination while people retain control over purchasing and contractual commitments.

This walkthrough shows the integration boundary with e2a. Your ERP, purchase-order system, and vendor records remain authoritative; e2a gives the procurement agent a real inbox, structured inbound authentication evidence, threaded replies, and an approval gate.

See the complete procurement agent use case.

Receive vendor mail

Listen on a dedicated vendor address and connect each message to purchase-order context:

from e2a.v1 import AsyncE2AClient

async with AsyncE2AClient(api_key="e2a_...") as client:
    async for event in client.listen("[email protected]"):
        if event.type != "email.received":
            continue

        message = event.data
        purchase_order = await procurement.lookup_purchase_order(
            message["text"]
        )

Use e2a's authentication evidence as one signal in your policy. Domain authentication does not prove that the content is safe or that a specific employee authored the message.

Extract an update and reply

The agent can extract an ETA or missing field, then ask a focused question in the same thread:

        reply = await procurement_agent.follow_up(
            message=message["text"],
            purchase_order=purchase_order,
            conversation_id=message["conversation_id"],
        )

        await client.messages.reply(
            message["delivered_to"],
            message["message_id"],
            {"text": reply},
        )

The application owns extraction, policy, and ERP updates. e2a owns the email boundary and preserves the conversation so the vendor can reply normally.

Hold commitments for approval

Start with human approval for messages that could create financial or contractual impact:

• Accepting a quote
• Confirming a purchase or quantity
• Changing delivery or payment terms
• Sharing internal information with a new vendor
• Escalating a dispute

With e2a's approval gate enabled, the message is held before delivery. A reviewer can edit or reject it, and the application can record the decision next to the purchase-order workflow.

What to build next

• Use separate identities for customer support, vendors, and internal operations when their policies differ.
• Connect MCP for a local operations agent or SDKs for a hosted service.
• Add inbound screening for untrusted vendor content before the agent acts on it.
• Pair the workflow with the e-commerce agent pattern when customer and supplier communications share order context.

The useful boundary is clear: let the procurement system authorize purchases, and let e2a give the agent a reliable email interface for the coordination around them.