Personal AI agents are taking the world by storm. People are using them to do everything from scheduling appointments to booking flights and shopping for car insurance. It’s extraordinary how fast AI is changing consumer behavior and how many of us are having those incredible “wait, it just did that” moments with our personal agents. Unsurprisingly companies are asking how they can best respect their consumers’ choices while also protecting their privacy and security.
So today we’re excited to announce Personal Agent Protocol — an open standard Meta and Sierra are developing along with industry partners at Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe, and Walmart that defines how personal agents interact with businesses. We’re designing it to handle authentication, empower consumers and give companies visibility into what personal agents do through their websites, APIs or company agents. It’s open for anyone to implement.
The problem to be solved #
Today most personal agents use websites and apps the way people do — pages and clicking through forms. When that can’t get the job done, they may call the company’s support line or open its web chat. This can take a long time, and the agent might fail to complete the task. But a direct connection could get the same task done securely in seconds.
To be adopted at scale, that connection has to work for all parties. Everyone wants security, but they have different needs, too:
- Consumers want speed, dependability, and trust — for the job to be done right the first time, by a personal agent they can count on to act in their best interests.
- Brands want visibility and control — to know when a personal agent is acting for a customer and to decide for themselves what it can do.
- Companies building personal agents want efficiency and access — a direct, consistent way to work with participating companies.
How it works #
The principle behind the Personal Agent Protocol we’re building is that consumers decide what access to give their personal agents, and companies set parameters for what those agents can do. It enables companies to work with personal agents in the way that is best for their customers: through their existing websites and APIs, or through an agent of their own.
Personal Agent Protocol starts on the website, where a personal agent can discover what the company offers and how to reach it. The personal agent then begins a session on its user’s behalf. It can start as a guest, which may be enough to check product availability or ask about a returns policy. When a task requires access to a customer’s account, they can sign in on the company’s page or use credentials they have already set up with their personal agent. The customer is always in control, deciding whether the agent has read-only or write access.
The session is built on OAuth, an established standard for authorizing access. It carries across channels, so a question asked before sign-in and an order change made afterward are part of the same visit. From there, the personal agent can get the job done using whichever routes the company believes will offer the best customer experience:
- Its website : navigating the company’s regular web pages.
- Its APIs : connecting through interfaces built on standards such as MCP and OpenAPI.
- Its agent : working through tasks that need conversation, such as a warranty claim.
The company decides what it makes available, the personal agent gets a consistent way to connect, and the customer gets a faster way to get things done.
What comes next #
We want to develop this protocol with the companies and personal agent builders using it and are excited that Instinct will also be joining the effort. We welcome all partners and plan to publish the v0.1 specification later this month, host design workshops with interested parties, and publish a reference implementation to help developers get started.
More detailed permissions could let customers and companies set limits on specific actions. Push notifications could let a company tell a personal agent the moment a flight is delayed or an order ships. Payments extensions could let a personal agent complete a purchase without sharing credit card information.
As personal agents take on more of our everyday tasks, companies need clear, secure ways to work with them while continuing to deliver a trusted experience. Personal Agent Protocol gives them that foundation — so the company and the personal agent can get the job done for the customer they share.