Show HN: CommerceTXT – An open standard for AI shopping context (like llms.txt)
3 days ago
- #e-commerce
- #AI
- #transactions
- CommerceTXT is designed for e-commerce transactions, providing AI agents with real-time data on pricing, inventory, and policies.
- Key features include real-time stock levels, subscription pricing details, and aggregated review data to reduce token usage.
- The protocol supports multi-regional, multi-currency, and multi-policy setups, ensuring accurate and compliant data for different markets.
- CommerceTXT significantly reduces payload size and compute costs compared to traditional HTML scraping, improving efficiency and reducing carbon footprint.
- The protocol uses a hierarchical structure (Root → Category → Product) and maps to Schema.org for legal compliance and data integrity.
- Future proposals include transactional actions with user confirmation and verified sustainability claims, pending community discussion.
- Trust is maintained through periodic verification of data against visible HTML and Schema.org, with penalties for discrepancies.
- Implementation involves adding a single text file to the root directory, with examples and templates available for easy adoption.