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The Agentic Commerce Stack:
Why Seven Layers Need One Foundation
Agentic commerce is forming through many overlapping standards. None of them, individually, gives developers a coherent way to build agent applications that span identity, discovery, checkout, settlement, compute, and storage. Autheo is developing a neutral foundation structured as seven layers and five strategic gaps.
The seven layers
The stack is numbered from L7 (identity and trust) down to L1 (protocol abstraction). Identity sits at the top because every other layer eventually depends on a verifiable answer to who is this agent, who controls it, and what is it allowed to do.
Trust and Identity
Agent identity, controller identity, merchant identity, mandates, and credential lifecycle. Autheo is developing a TheoID anchored Know Your Agent (KYA) reference framework.
Read the KYA docs→Agent Interface
Tool surfaces, structured documents, and registry lookups for autonomous agents. WebMCP, MCP, and llms.txt extensions are designed to expose the seven layer vocabulary to agent runtimes.
WebMCP API docs→Merchant and Catalog Discovery
Merchant manifests with product, offer, policy, inventory, jurisdiction, and trust metadata so agents and answer systems can understand any merchant.
Merchant Agent Readiness Kit→Checkout Execution
Cart, checkout sessions, delegated authentication, payment handoff, returns, and order events across ACP, UCP, and AP2 style mandate flows.
Protocol Router→Settlement and Clearing
Settlement route planning across stablecoin, card networks, x402 HTTP payments, and blockchain rails. Mandate verification links a KYA mandate to a settlement intent.
Protocol Router→Compute and Storage
Execution, inference, and durable storage for agent workflows, including manifests, mandate logs, registries, credential status lists, and audit trails.
Autheo technology→OS and Protocol Abstraction
Cross protocol routing, DevHub SDK direction, route planning APIs, and adapter interfaces. Describe an intent and receive a recommended route across ACP, UCP, AP2, x402, MCP, A2A, and settlement.
Protocol Router architecture→The five strategic gaps
The five gaps describe what the market is missing. Autheo is developing in each one and inviting external developers to contribute through Autheo Foundation grants.
Commerce OS
A neutral foundation that ties identity, discovery, route selection, compute, storage, and settlement into one developer facing model. Today, builders assemble these layers from separate vendors and protocols with no shared abstraction.
KYA (Know Your Agent)
The market has KYC and KYB for humans and businesses. It lacks a widely adopted credential model for autonomous agents: who is this agent, who controls it, what authority is delegated, and how can a counterparty verify all of that quickly.
Protocol Router
MCP, A2A, ACP, UCP, AP2, x402, card network programs, and blockchain settlement do not solve the same job. There is no neutral router that, given an intent, identity, merchant, and policy, can recommend a protocol path before execution.
Long-tail Merchant Discovery
Large platforms will build agentic paths for their own ecosystems. Smaller merchants and merchants outside those ecosystems still need a practical way to become understandable by agents without joining every protocol network individually.
Post-Quantum Security
Agent credentials, long lived mandates, merchant credentials, and settlement authorizations may persist for months or years. Agent commerce needs a roadmap backed answer to post quantum cryptographic agility for autonomous economic actors.
Why these need one foundation
The seven layers are not independent. L7 identity is upstream of every commercial decision an agent makes. L1 protocol routing touches checkout, settlement, and merchant discovery. L6 makes the rest of the stack legible to agents. The five gaps describe where neutral infrastructure is missing across the stack. Autheo is developing all seven layers as one program so that a developer can describe an intent and have identity, discovery, route planning, and settlement resolve together.
Build with us through Autheo Foundation
Autheo Foundation supports developers building tools across all seven layers and all five gaps. Grant tracks include adapters, validators, merchant manifests, KYA tooling, MCP and WebMCP extensions, SDK examples, and post quantum cryptography experiments.
Explore grants at AutheoFoundation.org →Public documentation
Agentic Commerce Docs Hub
Index of public docs on KYA, the protocol router, and merchant readiness.
KYA (Know Your Agent)
Credential framework for agent, controller, merchant, and mandate identity.
Protocol Router
Route planning across ACP, UCP, AP2, x402, MCP, A2A, and settlement.
Merchant Agent Readiness
Manifest fields, readiness checklist, and grant opportunities.