Glossary
What is the Personal Agent Protocol (PAP)?
Definition
The Personal Agent Protocol (PAP) is a proposed open standard from Sierra and Meta for how a personal AI agent identifies itself to a business, what access the customer has granted it, and what limits the business sets. Each business decides whether agents come in through its website, its APIs or its own customer-facing agent.
Also called: Personal Agent Protocol, PAP
At a glance
- CategoriesCommerce
- Related fieldsCommerce, Technical
- DifficultyIntermediate
At a glance
- Announced by Sierra with Meta in October 2026.
- Early partners include Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart.
- About identity and permissions. Payments are listed as a future extension.
- Sierra said the first specification would follow later in October 2026. It hadn’t been published when this page was written.
What it means for brands
PAP goes after the hardest problem in agentic commerce: what an agent is allowed to do without asking twice. A customer approving “handle my orders” isn’t the same as approving “share my address with a stranger.” If PAP gets adopted, businesses get a standard way to set those boundaries. It’s a spec to watch, not one to implement yet.
How this term is used
Agentic commerce is early, and its terms and standards are still forming. It’s the commerce branch of AI search marketing, built on organic GEO / AEO visibility.
It’s one of several competing standards; agentic commerce protocols compares them side by side.