--- type: WebPage name: It takes two to transact. id: "https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/a2a-discovery" url: "https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/a2a-discovery" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: "How an agent that has never heard of you works out what you offer and how to deal with you, without anybody writing an integration." --- # It takes two to transact. > How an agent that has never heard of you works out what you offer and how to deal with you, without anybody writing an integration. An agent that has never heard of you can work out what you offer and how to deal with you, without anybody writing an integration first. Your terms are published where it looks, so it reads them and gets on with it. Selfe lets your business and the agent it's talking to identify each other properly before anything is agreed. ## You are either there when it looks, or you are not. An agent working on somebody's behalf does not ring ahead, fill in a form or wait for an account to be approved. It arrives, reads whatever is published at your address, and either finds enough to work with or goes to the next name on its list. Being connected means the answer is already sitting there. What you sell, what you will accept, who to deal with and how. Fitted once and answering from then on, which is what a standard gets you and what an integration never quite manages. So there is being reachable, and there is being reachable by whoever turns up. Your Selfe hands over every part of that, every time, with nobody at your end asked to be available. An agent nobody has heard of gets the same answer as one you know. ## What an agent finds. An agent does not ring ahead. It reads what is published at your address and either finds enough to work with or moves on. **Derwentwater Launch Company** The Keswick Launch boat trips on Derwentwater, now readable by an agent in real time, live pricing via FareHarbor, through Visit Keswick. **Cranstons Cumbrian Food Hall** A Cumbrian food hall and deli, connecting through its own WooCommerce shop, via Visit Keswick. ## Your address gains something that answers agents. Your Selfe adds an agent card and a set of endpoints to the domain you already own. An agent arriving at your name gets everything it needs to start, with nothing agreed in advance by anybody. Your website carries on serving people at the same address, unchanged. So the front door works for both kinds of visitor, and neither of them has to know the other one is there. ## Worth reading next The latest on how agents actually work, written as it happens. **Can an agent actually buy from you?** *(coming soon)* The foundational question, answered plainly: what has to be true before an AI agent can complete a booking rather than just mention you. **Being found is not the same as being bought from.** *(coming soon)* An AI agent can mention your business and still never send it a booking. What closes that gap, and where most of the work actually happens. **Your booking button is not the point.** *(coming soon)* A link back to your site is not something an agent can act on. What it actually needs to make the booking happen itself. ## Do we need to build our own AI agent? No. Your Selfe is the business-side agent and publishes the identity, tools and terms an outside agent needs. You configure what it may say and do; you do not need to build a separate conversational product or maintain the protocols yourself. **What is an outside agent allowed to access?** Only the facts and actions your Selfe publishes for that purpose. Your playbook controls what may be answered, quoted, held, booked or paid without asking you. The systems behind Selfe are not handed over to an outside agent, and a request beyond the permitted action is refused or escalated. **What do the credentials actually prove?** They prove who made a claim, which identity is asking, who delegated that request and what authority travels with it. They do not make every claim true by magic; they make the parties and evidence checkable, so your Selfe can decide what level of trust a transaction requires. **What stops something hammering our systems?** Requests reach Selfe through Cloudflare and are checked before anything is allowed near a booking or commerce system. Rate limits, identity checks and action permissions separate ordinary discovery from something attempting to transact. Your operational systems see only the requests that pass those controls. **Can an AI agent really complete a sale or booking?** Yes, where your connected systems and rules allow it. Selfe checks live availability and terms, takes authorised payment through your existing provider, and writes the order or booking into the system your team already uses. Anything outside your rules stops before it commits. ## 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.