What Is OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)?
A practical definition of OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol, including product discovery, feeds, cart, checkout, orders, authentication, MCP, and catalog implications.
OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open commerce specification for connecting agent-led product discovery and transaction experiences to merchant systems. It supplies common contracts for capabilities such as product and offer feeds, carts, checkout, authentication, orders, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.
ACP is connective infrastructure. It does not become the merchant’s catalog, determine which supplier specification is correct, or repair a stale offer.
Discovery and transaction are different jobs
ACP spans more than a buy button. A shopping journey can include:
query → discovery → comparison → product and offer selection → cart → merchant conversion → order
Discovery asks whether a product should be represented and recommended. Transaction asks whether a particular offer, for a particular variant and shopper context, can be purchased now. The first needs rich product facts; the second needs live commercial state and valid operations.
Feed vs ACP
| Layer | Primary job | Typical information |
|---|---|---|
| Product feed | Publish products and offers for discovery | IDs, titles, descriptions, images, attributes, price, availability, URLs, and promotions. |
| ACP | Connect agent commerce capabilities | Feed, cart, checkout, authentication, order, and MCP contracts. |
| Merchant backend | Apply business rules and execute operations | Inventory, pricing, eligibility, fulfillment, tax, policies, checkout, and orders. |
| Trusted catalog | Provide canonical product truth | Identity, variants, normalized attributes, relationships, evidence, and provenance. |
A feed and ACP are therefore not competing answers. A merchant may publish discovery data through a feed or platform provider, use ACP-compatible capabilities for deeper interactions, and send the shopper to a merchant checkout. There is no reason to pretend every merchant needs one identical architecture.
Checkout, merchant of record, and authentication
ACP can support cart and checkout interactions while allowing merchant-controlled conversion experiences. The merchant retains responsibility for the customer relationship, product representation, pricing, fulfillment, policies, and orders. Authentication links a shopper or agent session to the account context needed for saved details, eligibility, loyalty, or other authorized capabilities; it should not expose private prices or entitlements to anonymous discovery.
Orders and post-purchase state
Once a transaction exists, the system needs consistent identifiers across cart, checkout, payment, and order records. Status changes should be current, idempotent, and traceable. A catalog identity mismatch that looks minor during discovery becomes an operational defect when a return, replacement, or support action targets the wrong line item.
How MCP relates to ACP
MCP is a general protocol for connecting models to tools and context. ACP defines commerce-specific resources and behaviors. An ACP implementation can use MCP to expose commerce capabilities, but MCP alone does not supply a complete merchant data model or validate a product catalog.
ACP vs Google UCP
Both ACP and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol address interoperable agentic commerce. They differ in specification design, ecosystem, capability models, and implementation paths. Merchants should avoid building two competing sources of product truth. Resolve identity, attributes, relationships, and provenance once, then publish the appropriate projection to each channel.
See the ChatGPT Catalog Readiness Guide
Product-data implications
ACP can standardize the interface but cannot manufacture missing product truth. Merchants still need to:
Make one catalog ready for every agent channel
Claro resolves duplicate product identities, fills and validates missing attributes, preserves provenance, and keeps records current across PIM, ERP, and supplier sources. The result can support ACP, UCP, merchant-built agents, feeds, and whatever commerce interface comes next.
Run an Agentic Commerce Readiness Audit
Further reading
FAQ
Is ACP the same as an OpenAI product feed?
No. A feed publishes product and offer data for discovery. ACP defines interoperable commerce capabilities around that journey, including cart, checkout, orders, authentication, and MCP integration. A merchant may use several delivery paths together.
Does ACP make OpenAI the merchant of record?
No. The merchant remains responsible for the commercial relationship, fulfillment, policies, product facts, and applicable obligations while ACP connects the agent experience to merchant capabilities.
What product data matters most for ACP?
ACP depends on stable product, variant, SKU, and offer identities; structured decision attributes; current price and availability; valid URLs and images; policies; and provenance for claims used in recommendation or purchase.
Claro
See how Claro handles this in production
This concept is one piece of keeping a catalog trusted. See how Claro resolves identity, enriches missing attributes, and validates every update before it reaches your PIM or ERP.
Learn more