Agentic commerce lets AI agents help people discover, evaluate or buy products. For a small business, readiness starts with a narrower question: which part of one customer's purchase can we support accurately today? Use this checklist to decide between improving product information, testing an existing channel and commissioning an integration. The worksheet is free to copy; you do not need Soloop to use it.
Separate discovery from a completed order
A product appearing in an assistant's answer does not establish that the assistant can buy it. A checkout demonstration does not establish that your team can deliver, cancel or support the resulting order. Write the exact channel and customer journey before choosing a protocol or developer.
For this guide, track four steps separately: discovery, buyer authorization, checkout and order support. A team can investigate the first step while the others remain unsupported. These are planning categories, not a certification or a universal implementation standard.
Shopify describes ChatGPT as a discovery referrer using store checkout; some other channels offer direct checkout when enabled. Check your actual store and channel.
Shopify agentic storefrontsGoogle's UCP guide distinguishes native and embedded checkout integration paths. A published protocol does not confirm your merchant's enrollment or supported use case.
Google UCP guideStripe documents seller paths including goods, subscriptions, digital content and APIs. Verify the particular integration; category-level support is not universal channel compatibility.
Stripe agentic commerceChoose the smallest question that could change a decision
Pick one buyer, one offer and one channel you can actually inspect. Ask a recent customer how they found and compared the product, with permission to record their answer. An AI-shopping announcement is a reason to investigate a channel, not evidence that your customers use it.
Use the table to choose your starting point. The suggestions are editorial guidance, not a prediction of channel performance. On a narrow screen, scroll tables sideways.
| Dimension | Current situation | Useful next check |
|---|---|---|
| Product information | Buyers struggle to compare variants or understand delivery. | Verify one product page against current price, options and policy sources. |
| Existing channel | Your provider offers a channel, but your account's eligibility is unclear. | Check the account controls and current documentation before commissioning custom work. |
| Custom purchase flow | The purchase needs approval, a quote or a special configuration. | Map the human handoff and ask the provider which steps the chosen path supports. |
| No buyer signal | Nobody has reported using assistants for this purchase. | Run a small customer-discovery exercise; keep engineering work deferred. |
Copy the readiness brief before hiring developers
Copy these rows into a document. For every answer, retain the source URL or permissioned internal note, date checked and owner. Label evidence observed, reported, inferred or unknown. An unanswered launch-critical question stays open; do not turn a mostly filled table into an overall readiness score.
| Dimension | Write this down | Evidence that closes the question |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer and job | [Buyer] needs [offer] for [specific job]. | [Recent buyer account or observed journey; not a market-size estimate] |
| Channel and eligibility | [Provider, channel, market, account and product type] | [Current provider documentation plus account-specific confirmation; date] |
| Offer truth | [One product or plan; authoritative price, options and availability] | [Named data owner and comparison with the customer-facing representation] |
| Purchase boundary | [Where the customer confirms, where checkout happens and who can authorize it] | [Observed supported path; unanswered steps listed explicitly] |
| Order support | [Who receives, fulfills and handles corrections or cancellations] | [Test record that the order and customer support team can reconcile] |
| Exceptions | [Unavailable item, changed price, unsupported address or subscription choice] | [Expected response and observed test result; human fallback] |
| Time and stop rule | [Owner, time allowance, review date and reason to pause] | [A bounded decision such as fix information, test channel or defer integration] |
| Learning | [Question the test must answer and evidence to retain] | [Separate technical completion, customer interest and actual orders] |
Do a manual walkthrough before a build
- Capture the current offer. Pick one representative product and record its real options, price, availability and customer-facing terms. Use information you are authorized to inspect.
- Check the chosen provider's current requirements and account settings. Record unknown eligibility or unsupported features before touching an integration. Another merchant's screenshot does not establish your access.
- Try a realistic discovery question. Save the exact prompt, date, channel and answer. Compare the answer with the authoritative product information; repeat changed conditions as separate observations, not as a ranking study.
- Trace the handoff to the purchase screen. Record whether the buyer stays in the channel, opens your site or needs a person. Stop before any real purchase unless an authorized test purchase is part of the plan.
- Use the provider's supported test environment, where available, to rehearse an unavailable item and a changed offer. Verify the expected response with the implementation owner; this checklist does not prescribe a payment-security design.
- Hand the evidence to whoever handles orders. Ask them to locate a test record, explain its status and show the intended support path. Record any manual correction separately from an independently completed flow.
If you sell SaaS, document the subscription questions
A software plan can involve seats, billing cadence, a trial, usage charges, access provisioning and cancellation. A successful one-time product purchase is not proof that those steps work. List the specific requirements of your plan, then ask the chosen provider which are supported in the particular channel and account.
For example, a buyer asking an assistant to compare project-management plans is a discovery use case. Buying ten seats with annual billing and a trial requires a separate supported purchase and provisioning path. If that path is unverified, keep the next action at a product page, demo or human conversation. Do not describe the subscription as purchasable by agents merely because a payment provider supports subscriptions elsewhere.
Illustrative example: a two-person desk-accessory shop
The shop, results and numbers below are invented to demonstrate the decision process; they are not customer results, Soloop output or an industry benchmark. Cedar Desk chooses one adjustable laptop stand and one existing discovery channel. Its owner allows four hours for a manual readiness check before deciding whether integration work is justified.
The team writes six product questions: material, dimensions, supported laptop size, current price, delivery area and return window. Five answers match the store's source information. The delivery answer is wrong. The test has found an information problem; five correct answers do not cancel out a consequential sixth error.
| Dimension | What the team observed | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Offer information | 5 of 6 answers match; the delivery area is wrong. | Find where the mismatch arose. Correct stale store or feed data if found; otherwise record an assistant error and retest. |
| Purchase handoff | The shopper reaches the existing store checkout. | Record a successful handoff only; no direct channel checkout was tested. |
| Order support | No test order was placed. | Order creation, fulfillment and cancellation remain unverified. |
| Buyer interest | No actual buyer participated in the six-question check. | Ask relevant customers about their buying process before estimating demand. |
Measure learning without turning visits into sales
Keep separate counts for product-information checks, observed referrals, checkout attempts and completed orders. Record cancellations and manual support alongside orders. Use your existing analytics and order records where available; a missing referrer is unknown, not proof that the visit came from an AI agent.
At the review date, decide what the evidence warrants. Fix inaccurate information. Continue a limited channel test if eligible customers can complete the intended task. Scope an integration only when a specific unsupported step matters to a buyer and someone can own it. If there is no useful buyer evidence, defer the build and revisit after new customer conversations.
Use Soloop for the research brief
Soloop's public manual describes research into markets and competitors, accepting product URLs or repositories and working with code in a sandbox. That supports preparing a source-backed brief. It does not establish a native agentic-checkout integration, universal commerce compatibility or payment-compliance assurance.
Bring this request to a Soloop conversation: Our product is [URL]. Our buyer is [role]. We are considering [one channel]. Compare the current provider requirements with our offer, keep unknowns visible, and draft a readiness brief with source links. Start with research; leave transaction implementation as a separate scoped decision. The public entry link does not transfer your worksheet automatically.
Use the current manual to check the available research and development workflow before assigning work.
Soloop product manualSources and review date
Provider documentation was checked on October 13, 2026. The worksheet, test sequence and fictional shop are original editorial guidance. Recheck provider requirements, account eligibility and feature support before each implementation decision; review this guide by January 13, 2027. No search-volume, ranking or sales forecast is claimed.