{
  "schema_version": "1.1.0",
  "namespace": "agentnativecommerce",
  "domain": "agentnativecommerce.com",
  "status": "definition",
  "category": "agent-commerce-infrastructure",
  "term": "agent-native commerce",
  "canonical_url": "https://agentnativecommerce.com/namespace.json",
  "definition": "Agent-native commerce is a commerce architecture in which software agents participate as first-class transaction actors under explicit human or organizational authority. Agents can discover offers, evaluate constraints, negotiate or select terms, request or exercise delegated mandates, execute transactions, verify outcomes, and produce auditable settlement evidence through machine-readable interfaces and trust layers.",
  "anchor": "Agents as first-class economic actors, operating under bounded human or organizational authority.",
  "canonical_statement": "Agent-native commerce begins when agents can participate in commerce through explicit authority, machine-readable discovery, verifiable execution, and auditable settlement rather than through screens designed only for humans.",
  "distinction": {
    "agentic_commerce": "The broad market category in which AI agents assist or act on behalf of people and organizations in buying and selling.",
    "agent_native_commerce": "The infrastructure form of that category: commerce systems designed so agents can interact directly with merchant, identity, policy, trust, payment, verification, and settlement layers."
  },
  "architecture_layers": [
    {
      "name": "discovery",
      "purpose": "Agents can find merchants, offers, terms, policies, inventory, and capabilities in machine-readable form.",
      "primitives": [
        "agent_discovery",
        "merchant_discovery",
        "offer_discovery",
        "intent_capture"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "authority",
      "purpose": "Agents can prove who or what authorized an action, within which identity, budget, policy, time, and counterparty constraints.",
      "primitives": [
        "delegated_authority",
        "policy_constraints",
        "identity_attestation",
        "provenance",
        "trust_verification"
      ],
      "lattice_axis": "Layer 3 trust verification"
    },
    {
      "name": "execution",
      "purpose": "Agents can negotiate or select terms and complete transactions through agent-readable commerce and payment interfaces.",
      "primitives": [
        "term_selection",
        "negotiation",
        "checkout",
        "payment_execution",
        "outcome_verification"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "accountability",
      "purpose": "Transactions leave durable evidence for settlement, audit, dispute resolution, recovery, and organizational accountability.",
      "primitives": [
        "settlement",
        "receipts",
        "auditability",
        "dispute_resolution",
        "recovery"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "core_primitives": [
    "agent_discovery",
    "merchant_discovery",
    "intent_capture",
    "delegated_authority",
    "policy_constraints",
    "identity_attestation",
    "provenance",
    "trust_verification",
    "payment_execution",
    "outcome_verification",
    "settlement",
    "auditability",
    "dispute_resolution"
  ],
  "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"
  ],
  "boundaries": [
    "a conventional ecommerce storefront",
    "a chatbot overlay on a human-only checkout",
    "payment automation alone",
    "a single protocol, rail, vendor, marketplace, or token",
    "permissionless spending by an unaccountable agent",
    "a claim of affiliation with any standards body"
  ],
  "protocol_adjacencies": [
    {
      "name": "ACP",
      "type": "commerce interaction and checkout"
    },
    {
      "name": "AP2",
      "type": "payment authorization and mandates"
    },
    {
      "name": "x402",
      "type": "HTTP-native payment and settlement"
    },
    {
      "name": "MPP",
      "type": "machine payment"
    },
    {
      "name": "MCP",
      "type": "agent access to tools and resources"
    },
    {
      "name": "A2A",
      "type": "agent-to-agent interoperability"
    },
    {
      "name": "OpenAPI",
      "type": "machine-readable API description"
    },
    {
      "name": "llms.txt",
      "type": "model-facing discovery convention"
    },
    {
      "name": "well-known URIs",
      "type": "web discovery convention"
    }
  ],
  "topology": [
    {
      "layer": "payment doctrine",
      "domain": "agent-pay.org",
      "relation": "canonical payment hub"
    },
    {
      "layer": "transaction protocol",
      "domain": "agentic-commerce-protocol.org",
      "relation": "protocol observatory"
    },
    {
      "layer": "payment rail",
      "domain": "x402-payment.app",
      "relation": "rail-specific surface"
    },
    {
      "layer": "settlement and finality",
      "domain": "agentsettlement.org",
      "relation": "settlement doctrine"
    },
    {
      "layer": "financial intelligence",
      "domain": "agent-finance.org",
      "relation": "finance layer"
    }
  ],
  "minimum_viable_surface": {
    "human_readable": [
      "definition",
      "scope",
      "architecture layers",
      "boundaries",
      "governance"
    ],
    "machine_readable": [
      "/namespace.json",
      "/definition.json",
      "/llms.txt",
      "/robots.txt",
      "/sitemap.xml",
      "/.well-known/agent-discovery.json"
    ]
  },
  "governance": {
    "maintainer_type": "independent",
    "role": "semantic and infrastructure definition layer",
    "authority_model": "Human or organizational intent is the source of authority; agents exercise only explicit, bounded mandates.",
    "protocol_posture": "Protocol adjacencies are informative, not claims of ownership, endorsement, or conformance.",
    "payment_canonical": "agent-pay.org"
  },
  "informative_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "IBM",
      "topic": "agentic commerce market definition",
      "url": "https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/agentic-commerce"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Visa",
      "topic": "agentic commerce under user-set rules",
      "url": "https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/innovation/what-is-agentic-commerce.html"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Stripe",
      "topic": "Agentic Commerce Protocol",
      "url": "https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/protocol"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Google",
      "topic": "Agent Payments Protocol mandates and auditability",
      "url": "https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol/"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "x402",
      "topic": "HTTP-native programmatic payments",
      "url": "https://docs.x402.org/"
    }
  ],
  "publisher": "Velastra Codex Constellation",
  "updated": "2026-06-08"
}