On October 6, Sierra co-founders Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor announced the Personal Agent Protocol. It's described as "an open standard Meta and Sierra are developing along with industry partners" that defines how personal AI agents interact with businesses. Named partners include Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart.
According to Sierra's announcement:
- Guest first, then sign-in. An agent can start as a guest, for example to check product availability. For account tasks, the customer signs in and chooses whether the agent gets read-only or write access.
- The business sets the limits. "Consumers decide what access to give their personal agents, and companies set parameters for what those agents can do."
- Three channels. Agents can work through your regular website, your APIs (via standards such as MCP and OpenAPI), or your own customer-service agent.
- Timeline. A v0.1 specification is planned for later in October 2026, followed by design workshops and a reference implementation. Payments are listed as a possible future extension.
What it means for an SMB
- You don't need to build anything yet. There's no published spec. If you sell through Shopify or take payments with Stripe, watch for support to arrive through those platforms.
- Agents will read your site like a customer. Clear, current product details, stock and policies matter more when software is doing the reading.
- Decide your rules before the tools arrive. Choose which customer actions an agent may take on its own and which need a person. Our AI approval matrix is a simple way to write that down.