merx

AN OPEN INVITATION

Build the open agentic commerce ecosystem with us.

What should an online store provide when the buyer is software acting for a person? Merx is a place to explore that question through working code, explicit constraints and testable ideas.

What is agentic commerce?

In this project, agentic commerce means software agents helping people discover products, compare options and request purchases within an authorization boundary. An agent needs more than persuasive product copy: it needs comparable facts, clear policies and a way to verify the terms it is accepting.

Merx explores the merchant side. Its TypeScript engine provides structured catalogs, explainable matching, policy-based negotiation and mandate-bound orders through MCP, A2A and REST adapters. It is an early reference implementation, not a production checkout service.

A community built around useful problems

We are inviting contributors to help build an open agentic ecommerce community. The starting point is not a membership count or a promise of an industry standard. It is a reproducible buying problem and a small improvement that makes an agent's decision more reliable.

Catalog engineers

Show us where product data loses meaning. Help describe compatibility, evidence, units, product limitations and freshness without inventing facts.

Agent developers

Try a constraint your shopping agent needs. Challenge the explanations, missing-context handling and the boundary between discovery and authorization.

Payment integrators

Map a real provider to the payment interface. Define safe retries, verified settlement events and the guarantees an adapter can actually provide.

Merchants and researchers

Bring a fictional example based on a real catalog challenge. Help test whether these interfaces express delivery, returns and product suitability clearly.

Small contributions, clear outcomes

  1. Run the local demo and inspect a complete scripted purchase.
  2. Explore the Capability Feed proposal and try a constrained product request.
  3. Describe a missing behavior in GitHub Discussions, using sample data you can share.
  4. Propose one change with an example of the expected result. The contribution guide explains how to test and submit it.

Interoperability without inflated claims

Commerce discovery, authorization and payment execution are different layers. Merx keeps transport adapters and payment providers separate so new integrations can be added without rewriting the matching engine. Protocol names in a roadmap do not mean those integrations are finished.

Today the repository includes MCP, A2A and REST adapters, the experimental Merx Capability Feed and an extensible payment registry. Its bundled bank-transfer provider is a fictional example. Production identity, durable storage and payment reconciliation remain work to do.