Commerce Agents: Reference blueprint for building shopping and merchant agents

Anthropic released a reference blueprint, "Commerce Agents," for building shopping and merchant agents on its Claude platform, featuring two fictional agents (a shopping agent for customers and a merchant agent for staff) that run on the Messages API, Claude Agent SDK, and Managed Agents. The open-source repository includes four runnable verticals (retail, travel, telecom, entertainment) and a Claude Code plugin to scaffold agents, with all merchant writes staged for human approval and no real orders or charges placed.

Two commerce agents built on Claude: a shopping agent a business embeds in its app for customers, and a merchant agent its staff use to run the back office. Each is defined once prompt, skills, tool contracts, gates and runs on the Messages API, the Claude Agent SDK, and Managed Agents; four runnable verticals show both over the same libraries. Note Every company, brand, product, and person here is fictional; the only company is ACME. Nothing places an order, charges a card, or changes a live listing: checkout renders the cart for the host to complete, and every merchant write is staged until a person approves it. Business rules, authorization, and compliance are the deployment's. Python 3.11+ and Node 22. Clone, install, add a key, run a vertical: git clone https://github.com/anthropics/commerce-agents.git && cd commerce-agents python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt the seven packages and their pinned dependencies cp .env.example .env add ANTHROPIC API KEY cd examples && npm ci the eight web apps share one workspace python scripts/run demo.py retail API :8000 + storefront :3000 --merchant starts the portal instead of the storefront and --all starts both. The verticals are retail :3000, portal :3100 , travel :3001, :3101 , telecom :3002, :3102 , and entertainment :3003, :3103 ; each README lists prompts to try on both surfaces. The Claude Code plugin scaffolds an agent on these packages against your systems, or reviews one you have. With the repo cloned as above the plugin reads it as the reference : claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/commerce-agents claude plugin install commerce-builder@claude-commerce-agents claude /scaffold-commerce-agent a shopping assistant for our store The command asks about your stack, plays the plan back, and builds the project; /add-commerce-flow and /author-commerce-evals continue from there, and /review-commerce-agent starts from an agent that already exists plugins/commerce-builder/ /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/plugins/commerce-builder . Each command also runs when a request matches its description, so naming it is optional. The shopping agent searches, compares, plans, fills the cart, answers order and policy questions, and remembers what a customer tells it. Its five flows are the skills in shopping-agent/skills/ /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/shopping-agent/skills ; a deployment implements over its catalog, cart, order, and policy systems. /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/shopping-agent/core/shopping agent/backend.py StorefrontBackend The merchant agent explains performance, maintains listings, acts on inventory and order alerts, prices and promotes, and drafts campaigns; every write is a staged change the host's approval surface applies. Its five flows are the skills in merchant-agent/skills/ /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/merchant-agent/skills ; a deployment implements over its analytics, catalog, inventory, pricing, and campaign systems. /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/merchant-agent/core/merchant agent/backend.py MerchantBackend | Directory | Contents | pip package, import name | |---|---|---| commerce-common/ | commerce-common , commerce common shopping-agent/core/ StorefrontBackend , prompt, tool contracts, gates, executor shopping-agent-core , shopping agent shopping-agent/runtime-messages-api/ ShoppingAgent , the turn loop on the Messages API shopping-agent-runtime , shopping agent runtime shopping-agent/runtime-agent-sdk/ shopping-agent-sdk , shopping agent sdk shopping-agent/managed-agents/ merchant-agent/core/ MerchantBackend , prompt, tool contracts, change guardrails, gates, executor merchant-agent-core , merchant agent merchant-agent/runtime-messages-api/ MerchantAgent and the analysis delegate on the Messages API merchant-agent-runtime , merchant agent runtime merchant-agent/runtime-agent-sdk/ merchant-agent-sdk , merchant agent sdk merchant-agent/managed-agents/ examples/ demo common/ , shared web code web-shared/ plugins/commerce-builder/ docs/ safety.md enforced rules , backends.md mapping your systems , deployment.md other platforms tests/ tests/ scripts/ install.sh , run demo.py , smoke chat.py , screenshot tour.py , check.py , deploy managed agent.sh , verify all.py Messages API. The reference loop; the examples are host applications around it: python from pathlib import Path from shopping agent import ShoppingAgentConfig from shopping agent runtime import ShoppingAgent agent = ShoppingAgent backend=your backend, skills dir=Path "shopping-agent/skills" , config=ShoppingAgentConfig brand name="Your Store" async for event in agent.stream turn messages, session, state : ... text delta, tool call, ui, cart update change update on the merchant side , turn complete await agent.update memory messages, session memory extraction; this path only The example hosts take the session id in an X-Session-Id header. Agent SDK. The same prompt, skills, and tools, with the SDK running the loop; the host prefetches grounding reads, and nothing runs after the turn: python shopping-agent/runtime-agent-sdk/main.py --once "a two-person tent under $250" python merchant-agent/runtime-agent-sdk/main.py approves staged changes with y/N Managed Agents. A hosted agent over the same skills and contracts, calling your MCP server: scripts/deploy managed agent.sh shopping-agent/managed-agents/shopping-agent or merchant-agent/...; --live deploys Fencing, provenance gates, caps, memory validation, and the merchant approval gate run inside the tool call and hold on all three paths; grounding, the analysis budgets, and memory extraction are runtime features. docs/safety.md /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/docs/safety.md lists each rule with its module and paths, and what a deployment adds first; the examples have no authentication and the MCP servers bind to loopback. | Example | Storefront | Portal | |---|---|---| examples/retail/ | ACME Travel /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/examples/travel examples/travel/ present itinerary extension ACME Mobile /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/examples/telecom examples/telecom/ ACME Tickets /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/examples/entertainment examples/entertainment/ Each example's README has a Try section: the turns scripts/smoke chat.py runs, and single prompts with what a good answer does. ruff check . && ruff format --check . && pytest && python scripts/check.py python scripts/verify all.py the line above plus deploy dry runs and web builds python scripts/smoke chat.py --vertical travel one live conversation; needs a key requirements-dev.txt adds pytest and ruff. CI installs from it on two Python versions, builds the eight web apps, and checks that the package names stay unregistered on the public index the pin files install them from their directories, never from the index . To confirm caching, read cache read input tokens from turn complete , or the line each model call logs on its runtime's logger: zero on a second turn means the prefix changed. The runtimes take any anthropic client as client= and the SDK runtimes take the platform from the CLI environment; docs/deployment.md /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/docs/deployment.md covers GCP Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry, and gateways. None ship; both agents reach your systems through the backend interfaces. Where an official connector is the source of record, it is the integration target: analytics warehouses Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Amplitude , finance Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks , delivery Slack, Google Drive, Gmail . A commerce platform's own MCP server for catalog, cart, or checkout is called from a backend method server-side; on Managed Agents the manifest mounts it beside the role's server, and the provenance gates stay in front of every write. Backend methods. Each one calls your service server-side with the credential your host holds for the session; the model reads only the result. A flow whose steps have a fixed order enforces that order in the backend. Read the backend guide. walks through identity and credentials, ordered flows, checkout, products with options, and figures your platform cannot supply. docs/backends.md The same interface covers other business shapes. On a marketplace, seller is a search dimension and the merchant agent acts for the operator the session names. With account or contract pricing, the price quoted is the session account's. With no checkout of your own, turn the cart off or hand it to a quote, a purchase order, or a hosted checkout URL. Checkout hands off. The checkout card links to your own checkout route, or to the platform's hosted checkout URL one per seller on a marketplace . The backend returns the URL and the host renders it; the model never sees it. Start small. A shopping pilot implements search and product details and stubs the rest; a stubbed method returns an unavailable result and changes no prompt bytes. A merchant pilot implements the eight read methods and has the writes refuse; digests and metrics then run with no write path. Switch off what you do not have. A system the business lacks entirely no cart on a referral surface, no order tracking is an enable switch turned off, which removes its tools, prompt lines, and grounding rule on every path; park the flows that need it under skills/ staged/ . The merchant config has the same switches for listing edits, inventory, pricing, and campaigns. Add your own. A flow is a directory with a SKILL.md under either skills/ . Domain UI is a PresentationExtension the verticals ship seven . brand name , assistant name , and brand voice on either config set the identity. Copyright 2026 Anthropic PBC. Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 /anthropics/commerce-agents/blob/main/LICENSE . This is a reference implementation; it is not maintained and does not accept contributions.