A practical guide to agentic commerce.
Begin with the basics, then dig into bot access, product data, security, and the standards shaping AI shopping.
Start here
Begin with these three.
They set out the basics before the more technical pieces.
What is Agentic Commerce?
The plain-English introduction to AI agents as shoppers, and what retailers need to prepare.
Retail RealityWhat AI agents actually see when they visit your website
Why brand storytelling disappears when an agent can only parse fragments of the page.
SecurityThe WAF paradox
The infrastructure built to protect retailers is now blocking legitimate AI agents.
Ways in
Start with the set that fits your role.
New to agentic commerce
Commercial or retail leader
Article archive
The full library.
Grouped by theme for easier reading: security, standards, product data, and market research.
Start Here
FoundationsWhat is Agentic Commerce?
AI agents are becoming shoppers. Learn what that means for your business and how to prepare.
The Future of Shopping
Emerging standards like UCP, MCP, and WebMCP that will define the next era of e-commerce.
Thirty years of bots: the cat-and-mouse game that was never necessary
From Archie to GPTBot, the web keeps fighting the same access problem.
Security & WAFs
Access, controls, and riskThe WAF paradox: why protection infrastructure is blocking AI agents
WAFs cannot reliably tell a human-backed agent from hostile automation.
WebMCP: when your website starts handing agents the keys
What happens when pages expose callable tools inside the user's browser session.
What AI agents actually see when they visit your website
345+ European retail sites scanned. The agent sees what it can parse, not your brand story.
Product Data
Feeds, GTINs, and per-product readinessListed. In stock. The wrong bottle.
Why missing GTINs and weak product identity break agent matching.
Your product feed is your campaign now
Google AI Max reads Merchant Center attributes like a document. Agents use the same logic.
Per-product, not per-site: why every item needs its own agent score
Site averages hide the exact products that will fail agent discovery or checkout.
AOCF 1.0 — Agent-Optimised Catalogue Feed
An open extension for declaring per-product agent purchase terms.
Standards & Payments
Protocols and infrastructureThe agentic payments map
ACP, UCP, MCP, TAP, VIC, and MAP: what each protocol does and what they still need from you.
UCP Is Not Enough
Every brand listed on checkout.directory as UCP-ready still scored Not Ready for agentic commerce.
The Future of Shopping
How emerging protocols will shape agent identity, payment, and checkout.
Market Research
Reports and analysisRegional Analysis
Market-specific findingsNews
Company and ecosystem updatesScan intelligence
Twenty years of keeping bots out. Now we need to let the right ones in.
Bot protection is still necessary. The problem is that AI shopping agents are automated traffic too, and many sites now reject agents acting on behalf of real customers.
Provider breakdown - 119 sites
How hard is agent allowlisting?
Data from 486 unique e-commerce sites scanned by Aidō Lighthouse as of May 2026. Bypass difficulty reflects the merchant effort required to allowlist verified AI agent user agents, not malicious circumvention. Learn how protocols like Visa TAP and ACP are creating verifiable agent identity →