What does agentic commerce mean for a WooCommerce store?
An AI agent does the shopping for a person, and sometimes the checkout too. For a store owner the first practical question is which orders an agent placed. Agent Stamp writes that line on each WooCommerce order.
The pieces you will hear about
- Agents in a browser. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google Agent can open a store and check out like a visitor. Their published user-agents are ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, and Google-Agent.
- Web Bot Auth. An agent signs its request with an HTTP message signature (RFC 9421). The operator publishes the key, so the store can check it.
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). An open standard from OpenAI and Stripe, released in September 2025. It is behind Instant Checkout in ChatGPT.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP). A way for an AI app to call a store’s tools directly. WooCommerce has published its plans for MCP and ACP.
What changes on the order
An agent checkout lands like any other order. The referrer is often empty, so analytics file it as Direct. Nothing in WooCommerce says an agent placed it. The Buyer stamp does: a named agent, signed or declared, Likely agent, Unattended when no person used the checkout, or Human.
What to do first
Do not block agents to be safe. Some of them are buyers. Label the order first. After a few Monday emails you know how many orders were not a person, and which agents placed them. Decide from that.
Orders that skip the checkout page
An order created through the REST API or a commerce protocol channel such as UCP, ACP, or MCP never loads your checkout. Agent Stamp stamps it API, named by the client’s user-agent or by the channel, or under the agent’s own name when it signed or named itself. The check stays on the store, and checkout is never blocked.