In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →eXp Realty will let its agents plug the artificial intelligence assistant they already use into the brokerage's own systems, rather than asking them to adopt an assistant chosen by head office. The trade publication Inman reported on Thursday 8 October 2026 that the company unveiled the approach, which it calls "MCP First, AI of Choice", that day at eXpcon, its convention in Salt Lake City.
The idea is simple to state. An agent who pays for Claude or ChatGPT keeps that subscription and that habit. The brokerage, for its part, publishes the connections that allow the assistant to reach brokerage data once the agent has authorised it. According to Inman, the agent can then ask the assistant about production, leads, transactions or training progress, in the same window used for everything else.
Inman is, for now, the source of the details below: this article reports what the publication says eXp announced, adds what other trade outlets have published in the past week about the same technology, and sets out what has not been disclosed.
Figures given by an eXp executive and by the company, as reported by Inman on 8 October 2026. The survey figures are the executive's own account.
What eXp announced in Salt Lake City
eXp Realty is the core subsidiary of AGNT, Inc., as Inman describes the group. The announcement has two parts, and they work on different timetables.
The first part is the connection strategy itself. Inman reports that eXp is publishing connections to four of its own systems: the Hub; My eXp, which holds production and compensation data; eXp University; and eXp Divisions. Alongside its own systems, the company is connecting outside tools that its agents use: Canva, and the customer relationship management systems Lofty, BoldTrail and Cloze. Two more, Follow Up Boss and Sisu, are described as coming soon, with no date given.
Related readAustralia: what privacy law asks of an agency using AI toolsThe second part is larger and further away. Inman reports that eXp plans a rebuild, named AGNT OS, of the systems that manage how its agents close deals and get paid. The rebuild is to be built on Nexus, a platform developed by eXp International, and is targeted for early 2027.
The two parts answer different questions. The connections decide how an agent talks to the data. The rebuild decides what sits underneath: the transaction and payment systems that produce the data in the first place.
What MCP is and how the connection works
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. Inman describes it as an open standard introduced by the AI company Anthropic in late 2024. In plain terms, it is a common way for an AI assistant to connect to a system that holds data, so that the assistant can answer from that system rather than from general knowledge alone.
"MCP First" means the brokerage puts its effort into publishing those connections. "AI of Choice" means it leaves the choice of assistant to the agent. Inman's account gives the sequence in three stages.
- The brokerage publishes a connectioneXp makes one of its systems, such as My eXp, reachable through the Model Context Protocol.
- The agent authorises itThe agent links that connection to the assistant he or she already uses, such as Claude or ChatGPT.
- The agent asksQuestions about production, leads, transactions or training progress are answered from the brokerage's data.
The middle stage matters most. In Inman's description nothing reaches the assistant until the agent has authorised the link. The report does not go further than that on the mechanics: it does not say how long an authorisation lasts, how it is withdrawn, or which fields of a system such as My eXp are exposed and which are held back.
Which systems are being connected
The list reported by Inman mixes systems the brokerage owns with products sold by other companies. That mix is the point of the strategy: an agent's working day is spread over several tools, and the assistant is meant to reach all of them.
Related readAustralia: PropertyMe links agencies' own AI assistants to live data| System | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The Hub | eXp system | Being published |
| My eXp | eXp system: production and compensation data | Being published |
| eXp University | eXp system: training | Being published |
| eXp Divisions | eXp system | Being published |
| Canva | Outside tool | Being connected |
| Lofty, BoldTrail, Cloze | Outside CRMs | Being connected |
| Follow Up Boss, Sisu | Outside tools | Coming soon |
Source: Inman. No dates were reported for the tools described as coming soon.
The entries are not alike in what they hold. My eXp carries production and compensation figures, which are an agent's own business numbers. Training progress, which Inman lists among the things an agent can ask about, is a different kind of record.
Why the brokerage says agents should choose
The case for leaving the choice to agents rests on what agents already do. Inman reports that an eXp executive described a recent event at which 300 agents were surveyed. All of them, he said, use AI every day. They were split roughly evenly between ChatGPT and Claude, and about 80 to 90 per cent held premium accounts, the kind that support connectors. According to Inman, he described the approach as accurate in its direction.
Those figures deserve their scope. They come from one event and are relayed by the company's own executive; Inman gives no detail on how the agents were selected, and the attendees of one event are not a sample of a whole brokerage. What the survey does show is the reasoning: if agents already pay for an assistant and open it every day, a brokerage that builds its own has to persuade them to open a second one.
Adoption is the weak point of brokerage technology in general. T3 Sixty puts typical adoption of brokerage tech at 15 to 20 per cent, according to a Real Estate News article of 5 October 2026 on what brokers want from their software. The same article reports that some brokerages are replacing commercial products with systems assembled using general-purpose AI tools. A strategy that meets agents inside a tool they already use is one answer to that adoption figure.
Related readCalifornia's law on digitally altered listing photos, explainedInman draws the contrast with Compass, which is taking the opposite route: a centralised rollout of its Home Platform across the former Anywhere brands, with company-owned brands in 2026 and franchisees in early 2027. One company is moving its people onto a single platform; the other is opening its data to whichever assistant its people prefer.
AGNT OS and the Nexus platform behind it
The rebuild announced for early 2027 depends on a platform that is itself new. Nexus was announced in August 2026, Inman reports, as an operating platform built with AI. It began as what the company calls a "vibe-coding" experiment. Felix Bravo, managing director of eXp International, traced it in Inman's account to an event in Montreal about a year ago, where executives were challenged to build an agent's ideal system that way.
According to Inman, Nexus combines customer relationship management, transaction management, listing management, e-signature, marketing and recruitment behind one login. It is in beta after an alpha version in Latin America. eXp International, which operates in 26 countries outside the United States and Canada, says the platform can cut a market's software costs by up to 70 per cent.
The rollout is planned in three phases. Inman reports that the last of them is a tiered subscription open to agents and brokerages outside eXp, which would turn an internal system into a product sold to others.
The 70 per cent saving has no stated baseline
The reporting does not specify which markets the figure of up to 70 per cent covers or what it is measured against. Pricing and timing for the outside subscription are undisclosed too.
AGNT OS would bring that platform to the systems behind closings and agent pay. On the timetable reported, the connections come first and the rebuild later.
Other MCP moves in US real estate this month
eXp is not alone in publishing these connections. Real Estate News reported on 1 October 2026 that SourceRE has added an MCP platform that connects participating multiple listing services directly with AI platforms including ChatGPT and Claude, while applying each MLS's own data rules. According to the same report, it is offered as a member benefit to more than 240 MLSs, with no platform or implementation fees, and its advisory board includes Jessica Edgerton, chief executive of CMLS, and Jessica Hickok, chief executive of ARELLO.
Related readColorado's automated decision law and housing: what applies from 2027The two announcements sit at different layers. SourceRE's concerns listing data held by MLSs. eXp's concerns a brokerage's internal data: what an agent produced, what he or she was paid, which leads are open. Taken together, they describe an assistant that could reach both the market's listings and the agent's own business, each through a connection published by whoever holds the data.
The SourceRE report also names something the eXp report does not: rules. Real Estate News says the MLS platform applies each MLS's data rules to what the assistant may reach. Inman's account of the eXp announcement mentions the agent's authorisation, and no more.
What the strategy leaves open
Several questions follow from the announcement, and the published reporting does not answer them.
The first is cost. Under this model the agent pays for the assistant, and the survey cited by eXp suggests most already do. Cost is a live subject across the industry: Inman reported on 2 October 2026, citing Accenture, that 23 per cent of C-suite leaders report widespread, sustained value from AI, and that AI spending is on pace to top US$800 billion in 2026. The same article cites the firm WitnessAI as finding that nearly seven in ten US companies had AI initiatives run over budget. A brokerage that publishes connections instead of building an assistant may carry less of that spending itself.
The second is what happens to the data. Production, compensation and lead records would be read by assistants run by other companies, under accounts held by individual agents. The reporting does not say what terms govern that, or how much of each system is exposed.
The third is consistency. If agents are split roughly evenly between two assistants, as the eXp survey suggests, the brokerage supports two front ends it does not control, and the same question may be answered differently by each.
The fourth is timing. The connections are described as being published now, two outside tools as coming soon, and AGNT OS as targeted for early 2027. Nexus, on which that rebuild depends, is still in beta.
None of this is settled by one convention announcement. What Inman's report establishes is the direction: the first connections are being published, and the rebuild that depends on Nexus is pencilled in for early 2027.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
