Meta, Walmart, Stripe and Shopify back one set of rules for how AI agents deal with businesses

On Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, Sierra and Meta announced Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard they are building with Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart for how personal AI agents connect to businesses. A first draft of the specification is due later this month.

AI assistants that book, buy and return things for you are colliding with companies that never built their sites for robots. Some companies are blocking agents outright. This is the first big attempt to write one set of rules, and the names on it matter: Walmart, Shopify and Stripe cover a huge share of online shopping and payments. The good part is that you control what your agent can see and change, and companies can tell when an agent is acting for you. The catch is that it's only an announcement. There is no spec yet, and the biggest assistant makers outside Meta haven't signed on.

On Tuesday, 6 October 2026, Sierra published “Introducing Personal Agent Protocol.” The byline is Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor. The page prints October 6, 2026. It does not print an hour. Sierra and Meta say they are developing an open standard, with Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe, and Walmart, for how personal AI agents interact with businesses. Sierra says anyone can implement it. Sierra is the AI customer-service company led by Taylor and Bavor, the two people who wrote the announcement. Those lines are Sierra’s.

The problem Sierra says it is trying to fix. Today most personal agents use websites and apps the way people do. They load pages and click through forms. When that cannot finish the job, they may call the company’s support line or open its web chat. Sierra says that can take a long time, and the agent might fail. A direct connection, Sierra says, could finish the same task securely in seconds. Those lines are Sierra’s.

How Sierra says a visit starts. The agent begins on the company’s website, where it can find what the company offers and how to reach it. It can start as a guest. Sierra says that may be enough to check whether a product is in stock or to ask about a returns policy. When a task needs the customer’s account, the customer signs in on the company’s page, or uses login details already set up with the agent. The customer chooses whether the agent gets read-only access or write access. Read-only means the agent can look. Write access means it can change something, such as an order. Those lines are Sierra’s.

The session is built on OAuth. OAuth is the existing standard many apps use when you tap “sign in with” another account, so a company can grant access without taking the password itself. Sierra says the session carries across channels. A question asked before sign-in and an order change made after are part of the same visit. Those lines are Sierra’s.

The company decides which routes it offers. Sierra names three. One is the regular website, the pages a person would use. One is the company’s APIs, connections built on standards such as MCP and OpenAPI. An API is the door a program uses to ask a service for data. MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is a common plug so an AI tool can use another company’s software. OpenAPI is a standard written description of that door. The third route is the company’s own customer-service agent, for jobs that need a conversation, such as a warranty claim. Those lines are Sierra’s.

What Sierra says comes next. It will publish the version 0.1 specification later this month, host design workshops, and publish a reference implementation so developers can start. A specification is the written rulebook. A reference implementation is a working example of those rules. Sierra also says it wants to build the protocol with the companies and the personal-agent makers who will use it, and that it is excited Instinct will also be joining the effort. Ideas it lists for later include finer permissions, so a customer or a company can limit specific actions; push alerts, such as a flight delay or a shipped order; and payments that let an agent buy something without sharing a card number. Those lines are Sierra’s. The specification is not on the page today.

Who said what, on Sierra’s post. Tony Bates, chairman and chief executive of Genesys, said personal AI is “a new front door to the enterprise,” and that brands need a trusted way to know who an agent represents, what it is allowed to do, and how to work with it securely. Mani Fazeli, vice president of product at Shopify, said the aim is to turn a buyer’s intent into an outcome, from product questions through purchases, returns, and exchanges. Kevin Miller, head of payments at Stripe, said a customer who sends an agent expects the same service they would get themselves, and that Stripe is contributing so businesses have a standard way to recognize those agents. Shawn Malhotra, chief technology officer of Rocket Companies, said Rocket and Redfin are building so a Muse agent can move across their platform, from finding a home to securing financing. Those sentences are theirs, on the announcement.

CNBC, by Kate Rooney, reported the same announcement on Tuesday. Bret Taylor, whom CNBC calls OpenAI’s chairman and a leader of this effort, told CNBC: “It is kind of chaos until such a standard exists.” He said companies will be able to tell a personal agent from a person, and that a company does not want a random bot, one that is not acting for a person, to reach the service. CNBC says Amazon is among the companies that have blocked Meta’s agents, citing worries about website scraping. David Singleton, whom CNBC calls vice president of engineering and consumer products at Meta Superintelligence Labs, compared the standard to email: it works because everyone can use it to talk to each other. He said Muse already has millions of users in the United States and is growing quickly. Taylor told CNBC that OpenAI and Anthropic are not part of the effort now. He said he expects them to join, and that he will be “really disappointed” if competitors do not use it, because “the whole point of this is to be an open standard.” Those lines are CNBC’s.

The picture is Sierra’s launch graphic for the announcement. Small type says Introducing. The title is Personal Agent Protocol. Under it, a line reads “An open standard for personal agents.” Across the bottom are the logos of Meta, Sierra, Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe, and Walmart. The frame does not print a calendar date. It is the image from the announcement. It is not a photograph of a store, a checkout, or a person.

In plain terms, Sierra and Meta on Tuesday announced one open set of rules for how a personal AI assistant connects to a business. You would choose whether the assistant can only look at your account or can also change it. The company would choose whether the assistant uses the website, a direct software connection, or the company’s own support agent. Walmart, Shopify, and Stripe are among the names on the announcement. The written rules are not out yet. Sierra says the first draft comes later this month. OpenAI and Anthropic have not signed on, CNBC reports.