Hey HN! I built this free UCP Store Checker after Google and Shopify launched Universal Commerce Protocol in January 2026.
The problem: AI shopping agents (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) are starting to browse and buy from online stores. But 99% of stores are invisible to them. It's like the early 2000s web before robots.txt existed.
What is UCP? Think robots.txt for AI commerce. It's Google & Shopify's open standard that makes your store machine-readable so AI agents can discover products, check availability, and complete purchases.
What I built:
The tool instantly checks if your store:
- Exposes machine-readable product data
- Has protocol-compliant endpoints
- Can be discovered by AI shopping agents
- Is ready for agentic commerce
I tested 500+ stores before launch. Only 0.1% are UCP-ready. Most merchants don't even know this standard exists yet, but AI commerce traffic is already starting to flow.
The check runs in ~2 seconds and shows you exactly what's missing. Built this because I kept seeing merchants confused about why their products weren't showing up in AI agent results.
Technical details: Next.js frontend, validates UCP endpoints, checks for structured data schemas, analyzes protocol compliance. Open to feedback on what else to check for.
Curious what HN thinks. Is this the beginning of a major shift in e-commerce, or will AI agents never really take off for shopping?
Although I think at least currently I need to request approval from Shopify to even use the checkout API - I believe they are rolling it out slowly (?)
Is it correct to say that your tool looks allows me to skip Shopify APIs and create my own AI agent to speak UCP directly to merchants?
The problem: AI shopping agents (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) are starting to browse and buy from online stores. But 99% of stores are invisible to them. It's like the early 2000s web before robots.txt existed.
What is UCP? Think robots.txt for AI commerce. It's Google & Shopify's open standard that makes your store machine-readable so AI agents can discover products, check availability, and complete purchases.
What I built: The tool instantly checks if your store: - Exposes machine-readable product data - Has protocol-compliant endpoints - Can be discovered by AI shopping agents - Is ready for agentic commerce
No signup. Just paste your URL and hit enter. Try it: https://ucphub.ai/ucp-store-check/
I tested 500+ stores before launch. Only 0.1% are UCP-ready. Most merchants don't even know this standard exists yet, but AI commerce traffic is already starting to flow.
The check runs in ~2 seconds and shows you exactly what's missing. Built this because I kept seeing merchants confused about why their products weren't showing up in AI agent results.
Technical details: Next.js frontend, validates UCP endpoints, checks for structured data schemas, analyzes protocol compliance. Open to feedback on what else to check for.
Curious what HN thinks. Is this the beginning of a major shift in e-commerce, or will AI agents never really take off for shopping?
If I understand correctly, at least for Shopify I can already find products using: https://shopify.dev/docs/agents/catalog/mcp
and if I want to checkout I can use https://shopify.dev/docs/agents/checkout/mcp.
Although I think at least currently I need to request approval from Shopify to even use the checkout API - I believe they are rolling it out slowly (?)
Is it correct to say that your tool looks allows me to skip Shopify APIs and create my own AI agent to speak UCP directly to merchants?