How it works
How agentic checkout works, end to end
Agentic procurement replaces the human sourcing loop with one that runs continuously. Conduit reads the supply you already depend on, watches those lines for drift, ranks payable alternates before you need one, and lets an agent place the order inside limits you approved.
Here is the end-to-end flow, from the system you run today to a delivered order.
- 01
Connect what you already run
Approve Conduit in your ERP and Connector maps vendors, lead times, on-hand stock, and inbound into Hub as one graph. No migration, no second storefront. Self-hosting agents instead? Skip to step 3 and connect over MCP.
- 02
Watch the lines
Standing jobs join disruption events, price movement, and lead-time drift to your actual vendors, so the brief reaches you before the shortfall does. See Pipes.
- 03
Search supply
One query searches thousands of merchants at once, filtered to rails the agent can actually pay, and ranked on the merits: price, execution readiness, reliability, and reputation.
- 04
Decide on real signal
Every offer carries stated against observed delivery, on-time rate, per-carrier reliability, Agentic Execution Score, and product and merchant ratings, so the agent avoids the cheap order it cannot complete.
- 05
Execute or hand off
The agent completes checkout autonomously on a rail it holds and inside an approved mandate, or hands off a ready
continue_urlfor a human to finish in one step. Money flows straight to the merchant and never through Conduit. Limits: agent spend limits. - 06
Track and settle reputation
Live tracking with stated against observed ETAs lands in one command center, and reported outcomes feed two-sided reputation and AES, so good suppliers and reliable agents compound over time.
Four ways to run the same loop
The loop above does not change. What changes is how much of it you write yourself.
Frequently asked questions
- How can AI agents buy physical goods?
- An AI agent buys physical goods by calling a commerce interface that exposes live inventory, prices, payable rails, and checkout. Conduit gives agents one neutral MCP/REST endpoint to search thousands of merchants at once, compare offers on execution-readiness and reputation, and complete or hand off checkout, without browsing human-first storefronts, captchas, or manual card entry.
- What is agentic commerce?
- Agentic commerce is software agents discovering, negotiating, and purchasing goods and services autonomously on a person or company’s behalf, instead of a human clicking through a website. It runs on emerging open protocols like UCP, ACP, AP2, x402, and MCP.
- How do I let an AI agent purchase on my behalf?
- You give the agent a keypair identity and a spend mandate: limits, categories, and expiry it must stay within, for example via AP2. The agent then discovers supply, picks the best offer, and either completes an autonomous checkout on a rail it holds or hands off a ready cart for you to approve. Conduit translates one agent keypair into the handshake each merchant trusts.
- How do AI agents pay merchants?
- Agents pay on rails they can hold: pay on delivery (COD), x402 crypto, or any card on merchant handoff, all within a human-approved mandate. Conduit routes each order to a rail the merchant accepts and the agent can use; money flows straight from the buyer instrument to the merchant and never through Conduit.
- How is agentic commerce different from traditional online checkout?
- Traditional checkout assumes a human: a browser, a cart, manual card entry, captchas, and 3D-Secure. Agentic commerce is API- and protocol-native. An agent discovers normalized supply, decides on price, reliability, and execution-readiness, and completes or hands off checkout in seconds, with no human in the loop unless one is wanted.
- What happens if an agent cannot complete a checkout autonomously?
- Conduit hands off a ready cart via a real continue_url so a human can finish in one step, and the offer’s Agentic Execution Score flags that risk up front. Agents can prefer offers they can actually complete on a rail they hold, rather than hitting a human wall at the end.