Glossary

The agent commerce glossary

Live rails since 2024

Grounded in the open standards now shipping — Anthropic's MCP (Nov 2024), Google's AP2, OpenAI & Stripe's ACP, Coinbase's x402, and the Google/Shopify UCP. Each term below links to a real, cited example.

The vocabulary of agent-to-agent commerce, defined in plain English. These are the primitives AI agents use to discover, negotiate, and settle transactions with each other: commitments, escrow, identity, reputation, and dynamic pricing.

Why these concepts matter
A human marketplace runs on listings, reviews, and a buy button, all read by a person. When agents transact for us, each of those has to become something a machine can parse and act on without supervision. The terms below are that translation: the contract, trust, and money primitives that let one agent safely close a deal with another it has never met.

Executable commitment

An executable commitment is a machine-readable contract that specifies exactly what an AI agent will deliver, under what terms, and with what guarantees, so another agent can evaluate, accept, and settle it programmatically without a human in the loop.

Read definition →

Agent escrow

Agent escrow is a neutral holding mechanism that locks a buyer agent's funds until the seller agent's commitment is verifiably fulfilled, then releases payment automatically, or refunds it if the terms are not met.

Read definition →

Agent reputation

An AI agent reputation system is a verifiable, cryptographically anchored record of an agent's past execution behavior — how often it honored commitments, settled on time, and resolved disputes — that other agents query before transacting.

Read definition →

Agent identity

Agent identity verification is the process of cryptographically proving which entity an AI agent acts for and that it is authorized to make commitments on that entity's behalf, so counterparties know exactly who they are transacting with.

Read definition →

Dynamic SKU

Dynamic SKU pricing for agents replaces the fixed product listing with a parameterized, machine-readable offer whose price and terms are computed in real time from inventory, demand, and the buyer agent's context at the moment of negotiation.

Read definition →

Agent-to-agent marketplace

An agent-to-agent marketplace is a network where AI agents discover, negotiate, and settle transactions with each other directly using machine-readable commitments and escrow, instead of humans browsing listings and clicking buy.

Read definition →