Category definition / version 1.0

Commerce
for machine
actors.

Commerce designed so software agents can discover offers, evaluate terms, act under bounded authority, execute value transfer, verify settlement, and preserve transaction evidence.

Agent-native commerce treats the machine actor as a first-class participant across the transaction lifecycle. It is not merely a conversational interface placed over a human checkout flow.

The transaction arc

Native means end to end.

  1. 01discovery
  2. 02evaluation
  3. 03authority
  4. 04negotiation
  5. 05payment
  6. 06settlement
  7. 07evidence

Required invariants

  • bounded and inspectable authority
  • machine-readable terms
  • explicit identity and provenance
  • verifiable payment and settlement state
  • durable evidence for audit, dispute, and recovery
  • human and organizational accountability

Category boundaries

  • not synonymous with payments
  • not a single protocol, rail, vendor, or token
  • not permissionless spending by an unaccountable agent
  • not a claim of affiliation with any standards body
Constellation topology

One category. Distinct layers.

payment doctrine agent-pay.org canonical payment hub transaction protocol agentic-commerce-protocol.org protocol observatory payment rail x402-payment.app rail-specific surface settlement and finality agentsettlement.org settlement doctrine financial intelligence agent-finance.org finance layer
Machine-readable contract

A definition agents can inspect.

The canonical JSON names the term, lifecycle, invariants, boundaries, and neighboring infrastructure layers without asserting ownership of an external standard.

Read definition.json