---
title: The Headless Customer Funnel
description: A framework for analyzing headless businesses through the machine-consumption funnel: discovery, selection, access, ongoing consumption, and LTV.
author: get-headless
section: frameworks
order: 3
url: https://get-headless.ai/knowledge-base/headless-customer-funnel/
---

# The Headless Customer Funnel

A framework for analyzing headless businesses through the machine-consumption funnel: discovery, selection, access, ongoing consumption, and LTV.

## The machine-consumption funnel

A useful framework for analyzing headless businesses is the machine-consumption funnel. Each stage describes how agent-driven usage differs from human-driven usage.

## Discovery

How an agent becomes aware of a capability.

- Registries
- Search
- Marketplaces
- Embeddings
- Recommendations
- Protocol directories
- Documentation hubs

## Selection

How an agent determines whether a capability is fit for purpose.

Decision variables may include:
- Task fit
- Price
- Latency
- Quality
- Trust
- Authorization requirements
- Output format
- Rate limits
- Uptime
- Policy constraints

## Access and purchase

How the agent obtains the right to use the capability.

- Open access
- Token-based auth
- Delegated auth
- Enterprise provisioning
- Subscription
- Metered payment
- On-demand settlement

## Ongoing consumption

How repeated use happens over time.

- Reliability
- Quality consistency
- Integration depth
- Observability
- Billing clarity
- Memory and state retention
- Ecosystem compatibility
- Workflow dependence

## LTV in the age of agents

For headless businesses, long-term value may be shaped by:

- Repeated invocation
- Incorporation into automated workflows
- Low failure rates
- Structured outputs
- Strong documentation
- Predictable billing
- Accumulated context
- Switching friction at the workflow level rather than the interface level

---

Source: get-headless.ai — a publication on the headless economy.
Knowledge base index: https://get-headless.ai/api/knowledge-base.json