# Universal Commerce Protocol

> Status: Exploring

Exploring how open commerce protocols could let agents act through standardized capabilities instead of platform-specific integrations.

## A protocol boundary in front of a mature platform

The question I keep coming back to is how an agent-facing commerce protocol could sit in front of an existing ecommerce platform without the catalog, pricing, checkout, payment, identity, and order systems being redesigned around AI.

That is interesting to me because it approaches boundaries I already know from a new direction. Instead of every AI platform needing a custom integration, commerce capabilities could be exposed through a common protocol while the merchant platform keeps owning its business logic and its commerce state.

## Where the boundary would sit

1. **Agent**: An AI platform acting on behalf of a person.
2. **Capabilities**: Discovery, catalog, identity, checkout, orders.
3. **Mapping**: Capabilities resolved onto existing platform APIs.
4. **Platform**: Commerce logic, payments, and order state stay put.

## Open questions

- Where should the agent-facing boundary sit in an existing architecture?
- Which capabilities map cleanly onto current APIs, and which need orchestration?
- How should identity and authorization cross the agent-to-commerce boundary?
- How would agent-facing checkout coexist with an existing hosted checkout?
- How do payment responsibilities stay clearly separated?
- How does a protocol surface coexist with REST, GraphQL, and MCP-style integrations?
- How do merchants keep control while agents still perform useful actions?

## Current scope

The current scope is how an agent-facing protocol could map onto real commerce architecture and where that interface would meet existing platform APIs.

## Topics

- Agentic commerce
- Protocols
- Interoperability