--- type: InsightHub name: "Agent-ready transactions" id: "https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions" url: "https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: The journey from recommendation to a completed booking or order. --- # An agent looks before it leaps. > From recommended to bought. What has to be true for an agent to act, rather than merely send somebody back to a website. ## Start here - [The request behind your booking button is what matters.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/your-booking-button-is-not-the-point) — A booking button helps a person start a journey. An agent needs to establish the terms of a specific request, know what it may do and carry the relevant context into the next step. ## Featured - [The route from a true fact to a completed purchase.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/available-online-is-not-available-to-buy) — A product page showing live stock is not the same as a product an AI agent can buy. The gap between the two is usually a missing action, not a missing fact. - [What "a table for four at eight" is actually asking for.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/a-table-for-four-at-eight) — A customer request contains the variables that determine whether an offer is possible. Treating it as a loose search loses the information needed to give a trustworthy commercial answer. - [Five questions an agent checks before it'll recommend a product.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/a-product-page-is-not-the-product) — An AI agent shopping on someone's behalf doesn't browse a product page the way a person does. Before it will recommend anything, it needs five separate questions answered: does the exact variant exist, is it currently in stock, will it work for this specific case, what happens if it's wrong, and will it arrive in time. A page built to persuade a browsing human answers few of those directly. ## More in this hub - [What has to be true before an agent presses confirm.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/what-has-to-be-true-before-an-agent-presses-confirm) — An AI agent completing a booking on someone's behalf needs more certainty than a person browsing does, because nobody is there to notice if something's wrong before it's confirmed. - [What happens when an agent's request doesn't match your rules.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/what-happens-when-an-agents-request-doesnt-match-your-rules) — A request that falls outside a business's rules doesn't have to end the transaction, as long as there's a real, bookable alternative behind it that an AI agent can complete. - [Transactions for multi-unit operators: the same rules, every site.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/transactions-for-multi-unit-operators-the-same-rules-every-site) — A retailer running several shops shouldn't have to solve agent-ready transactions once per site. The rules an AI agent checks are one business decision, made once, not rewritten at every location. - [The three ways a transaction can still fail after the agent says yes.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/the-three-ways-a-transaction-can-still-fail-after-the-agent-says-yes) — An AI agent confirming a purchase isn't the end of the transaction. Three specific failure points sit between "yes" and the order completing, and each needs a different fix. - [Deposits, holds and cancellations: what an agent needs to know.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/deposits-holds-and-cancellations-what-an-agent-needs-to-know) — A hold, a deposit and a cancellation policy sound like one topic to a person booking a stay. An AI agent needs them treated as three separate, precisely stated facts, or it can misrepresent what's been committed. - [Agent-ready means the business sets the boundary.](https://selfe.ai/insights/agent-ready-transactions/agent-ready-doesnt-mean-fully-automated-heres-the-difference) — Being ready for an AI agent to complete a purchase and letting every purchase complete without a person ever looking are two different decisions, and a business can choose the first without the second. ## Act on this - [Check whether an agent can buy from you](https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/buyability-check) — the free readiness scan. - [Discover venues](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/discover) — `POST`, semantic browse across the registry. - [Match a bookable answer](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/match) — `POST` with dates and party size. - [Verify Selfe's identity](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/did.json) — `did:web:selfe.ai`. - [Agent card](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/agent-card.json) — how to connect over A2A or MCP.