Meta and Sierra announced on October 6, 2026 that they are developing an open standard — Personal Agent Protocol — that defines how personal artificial intelligence (AI) agents communicate with businesses. Walmart, Stripe, Genesys, Rocket, Shopify and other industry companies have also joined the project.

Why the Protocol Is Needed

Personal AI agents are designed to act in online shopping processes on behalf of users. But in recent weeks these agents have faced growing obstacles from websites — platforms are mistaking them for automated bots.

Amazon blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from its retail website — the agent can no longer view Amazon's product catalog or make purchases there. That means one of Muse's core capabilities has been cut off: the agent can neither search for products on Amazon's site nor place orders.

The problem isn't limited to Amazon. Some users reported interruptions when shopping on Walmart's site via Muse. But Walmart denied the interruptions were intentional. The company is collaborating with Muse — a partnership announced at the Meta Connect developer conference in September. So Walmart isn't trying to push the agent off its site; on the contrary, it wants to work with it.

Meta's position is clear: the company is calling on businesses to work with agents rather than block them.

"Turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it. We would rather work with businesses to solve the underlying problems than see them lose that customer," Meta said in its blog post.

This statement captures the core idea of the open standard: jointly solving the issues that worry websites while keeping customers who arrive through agents.

Who the Partners Are

According to TechCrunch, industry partners including Meta, Walmart, Stripe, Sierra, Genesys, Rocket, NiCE and Decagon are working on the open standard. Their participation shows the problem isn't about a single company or a single agent.

Sierra, in its announcement, confirmed it is developing the protocol together with Meta, Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart. The company said the protocol will define how personal agents interact with businesses.

Differences in the company lists suggest their roles in the project differ. While Meta appears as the overall initiator of the standard, Sierra contributes as a technical partner in its development. The breadth of the partner circle signals the seriousness of the initiative.

How the Protocol Works

Personal Agent Protocol pays special attention to agent-to-agent communication for e-commerce purposes. According to Meta, the protocol sets the rules for how AI agents communicate with businesses.

Its main task is to separate legitimate agents acting on behalf of a user from malicious bots. This distinction is one of the most painful points of today's web ecosystem: sites block bots to defend against spam and malicious automation, but in doing so they also shut out legitimate agents.

Companies expect the protocol to let sites distinguish agent requests from bot attacks. Instead, the standard proposes a procedure for determining that an agent is legitimate and on behalf of which customer it is acting. This is expected to give businesses more precision and predictable control when working with agents.

Why This Matters

Agents being blocked by sites sharply reduces their usefulness. If an agent cannot shop at the largest online stores, users will stop entrusting it with tasks. The Amazon example showed this risk is real.

On the other hand, businesses don't want to lose customers either. Meta's statement makes exactly this point: turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it. That's why the company calls on businesses to solve the problems together instead of blocking.

The open standard could become exactly that meeting point. On the one hand, it gives businesses the ability to identify and control agents; on the other, it opens the way for legitimate agents to move freely across websites.

Next Steps

Work on the standard is currently at an early stage. The companies haven't yet announced the protocol's exact technical details — so far only its goal and participants are known.

But the scale of the initiative shows its seriousness. Major players like Meta, Walmart, Stripe and Sierra uniting around a single standard is being seen as a sign that the AI agent ecosystem is stepping into a new phase. If the standard is adopted, companies hope personal agents will be used in online commerce far more widely than today.

Read more about the event in the TechCrunch article; Sierra's official statement was published on the company's blog.