Evaluating anyone who offers to make you "agent ready"

01

Why the questions are fixed

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

The vocabulary in this field is recent, and a supplier who has read the primary documents and one who has read a summary of them sound similar in conversation. There is little accumulated merchant folklore to compare against, and much of the published material is written by parties selling something.

A fixed set of questions does not require the buyer to know more than the supplier. It requires the answers to be checkable, which is a different property and one that does not depend on expertise. Sending the questions in writing before the first call produces a reply that can be read against the documents it names.

02

Question one: which layer do you operate on?

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Discovery, interpretation, transaction, and lifecycle are four systems with four different owners. A supplier offering to get a seller "into AI shopping" has named none of them, and the difference is material: improving how items are described is a different purchase from creating a path by which an order can be placed.

A specific answer names one or two layers. The follow-up that resolves an unspecific one is which layer the supplier will not touch and what they would refer elsewhere, since a scope that excludes nothing has not been drawn.

03

Question two: which documented path, by name?

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

A documented path has a name, a publisher, and a URL. Asking for the specification, program, or interface by name produces something the buyer can read before the second call, which is where most of the checking happens.

Two conditions frequently turn up in the document itself. OpenAI’s merchant onboarding material describes availability as starting with a defined set of participants rather than as open to every seller,¹ which makes the question whether the supplier is inside that set rather than whether they are competent. Separately, eBay’s user agreement states that using automated means to purchase requires permission it has given beforehand and in express terms,² so a path proposed for that venue is checked against the venue’s own terms. Both are findable in an afternoon.

04

Question three: what evidence arrives on delivery?

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

The deliverable is defined as evidence rather than as an outcome, and it is defined before signing. Outcomes on these surfaces are not within a supplier’s control. Evidence is, which is why it can be specified and why the specification is agreed while both parties still have a choice.

The last row describes a subscription with an integration attached. That can be a reasonable purchase, and the distinction is that it is priced and understood as an ongoing service rather than as an asset the seller now holds.

05

Question four: what happens if nothing changes?

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Asked in the specific: if six months from now nothing measurable has moved, what will have happened contractually? A fixed scope that has been delivered and ended, a defined review point, and a payment structure that does not renew without a decision are all answerable in a sentence each.

The reversal question sits beside it. What of this work is undoable? A catalog restructured around one surface’s field names carries a migration when that surface changes its fields, and the same reasoning this course applies to protocol governance applies to a supplier’s design choices.

Four rows came back as facts and one did not. An unanswered reversal question is a row on the sheet rather than a verdict about the supplier, and what it supports is asking once more in writing and moving the decision date rather than deciding around it.

06

What a narrowed claim sounds like

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Suppliers with working knowledge of this area tend to narrow their claims without being pushed, and the narrowing is observable in the reply rather than inferred from tone.

• They name one or two layers and decline the others.
• They cite the document rather than paraphrasing it, and they mention its stated limits unprompted.
• They separate the work that pays off regardless of what these surfaces do from the work that depends on them.
• They ask what the seller’s current availability accuracy is, since it constrains everything downstream.
• They state when something the seller asked for is not currently available to a seller of that size.

The last item is the one that can be checked against the cited documents directly. Where onboarding is described as limited to a defined set of participants, a supplier saying so is restating what the publisher states.¹

07

The four answers and what each settles

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

The layer answer settles what is being bought. The path answer settles whether it is documented and whether its stated conditions are met, which is where the published material is read directly. OpenAI’s onboarding documentation describes a defined starting set of participants,¹ and eBay’s agreement conditions automated purchasing on express prior permission.²

The evidence answer settles what the seller holds at the end, and the failure answer settles what happens if the outcome does not arrive. None of the four requires the buyer to evaluate a claim about the future.