--- type: WebPage name: Do take our credentials for it id: "https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/trust" url: "https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/trust" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: "How both sides check each other before anything happens, with identity, authority and evidence all resolving to something signed." --- # Do take our credentials for it > How both sides check each other before anything happens, with identity, authority and evidence all resolving to something signed. Both sides can check each other before anything happens. Identity, authority and evidence all resolve to something signed, so a deal between strangers behaves like one between people who have met. Selfe carries your credentials so an agent can check them itself, without a phone call. ## Two strangers, one deal, and no time to get acquainted. An agent has never dealt with you. You have never dealt with it. Between you there is real money and no time at all to decide whether this should happen. So everything either side needs to be sure about travels with the request. Who this is, what they are allowed to agree to, and what is true about the thing being sold, all of it signed and any of it refusable. Nothing is taken on faith, which sounds cold and is the opposite of it. It is what lets a business say yes to somebody it has never heard of. Your Selfe puts your side of that forward and tests theirs, on every request, so nobody at your end has to size up a stranger at speed. ## What travels with the request. Every request arrives carrying its own evidence, so checking one does not mean asking anybody. **Ye Olde Friars** Keswick's own mint cake maker, connecting through its Shopify shop, via Visit Keswick. **Visit Keswick** The Keswick Tourism Association itself, curating its members into one agent-readable roster, the relationship every other real entry here goes live through. ## Your credentials gain a form that can be checked in a second. What your Selfe adds is a signature. The rating, the licence, the accreditation, each one put into a form that holds up to being checked on the spot, by anybody, without a phone call to whoever awarded it. The certificate on the wall stays on the wall, and the scheme you are a member of carries on meaning what it means. Which is what lets a stranger hand money to a name it has only just read. ## 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. ## 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 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 does Selfe do when it is not sure?** It stops and asks, showing the conflict, sources and decision required. Everything it settles alone is logged. Your answer can become a playbook rule, so the same uncertainty does not keep returning. **Who owns what Selfe knows about us?** Your business data and the Echo built for your business remain available to you and can be exported. Facts taken from public or third-party sources remain attributable to those sources rather than becoming ours or yours by repetition. Nothing in the working record is hidden from you or held back if you leave. **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. ## 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.