--- type: WebPage name: Frequently answered questions. id: "https://selfe.ai/faqs" url: "https://selfe.ai/faqs" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: "The questions that come up before anybody signs anything, answered plainly, including what happens if you leave." --- # Frequently answered questions. > The questions that come up before anybody signs anything, answered plainly, including what happens if you leave. The questions that come up before anybody signs anything, answered plainly. That includes what happens when your Selfe gets something wrong, who owns what it knows, and what any of it costs. ## Everything worth asking before you sign anything. Start with the question you actually have. The answers are direct, including the awkward commercial and control questions. **What is a Selfe?** Selfe is the platform a business runs to be found, understood, trusted and paid by AI agents. It turns what your pages and systems know into facts an agent can check and act on, then lets the sale complete through the systems you already use and on the rules you set. **What is agentic commerce?** It is commerce in which AI acts for the buyer instead of merely giving them a list of links. The agent can compare options, check evidence, ask about live availability or stock, agree within a mandate and complete the purchase. Selfe is the layer that lets your business take part safely. **What is an Echo?** Your Echo is the structured record behind your Selfe. It holds products, rooms, rates, stock, rules and evidence as sourced facts an agent can use individually, rather than leaving them buried in pages. **Is Selfe software or a service?** It is a product with an implementation layer. Most businesses use the standard Self or Assisted routes. Selfe-Made adds twelve weeks in a cohort of ten when the business has rules, teams or exceptions that should not be forced into a default. It is implementation of the same platform, with a date on the end of it, rather than something open-ended. **Is this replacing our website or SEO?** No. Your website still serves people and SEO still helps search engines find it. Selfe adds the sourced, current facts an agent needs to decide whether you fit and take the next step. It works from your existing site rather than rebuilding it. **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. **What kinds of businesses is Selfe for?** Businesses with something real to sell or book and information that changes: rooms, tables, tours, seats or products. The useful starting point is usually an existing website plus a booking or commerce system holding availability, stock or orders. Selfe works for one location and for groups managing many. **Does company size decide which route we need?** Complexity matters more than headcount. A large catalogue with standard rules may suit Self. A smaller business with several systems, approval layers or important exceptions may need Assisted or Selfe-Made. The route changes the help around the platform, not the platform you end up running. **Is this really the same product for hospitality and ecommerce?** Yes. An agent needs the same underlying things in both: a clear offer, evidence, live availability or stock, rules and a way to pay. The adapters and examples differ, but the Selfe, Echo and controls are the same. A room night and a jacket are different products carried over the same rails. **Who is Selfe not for?** It is not a replacement for an agency, a website rebuild or somebody to operate your channels. It is also a poor fit when there is no offer to describe, no source of availability or stock and no intention to transact directly. The readiness check is the quickest way to establish that without buying anything. **Do we have to replace anything we already use?** No. Your website, booking or commerce system, listings and payment provider carry on doing their existing jobs. Selfe reads and acts across them. Nothing has to be migrated, retyped or switched off simply to connect. **What does Selfe connect to?** Usually your website, the system holding your calendar or stock, whatever takes payment and the important places where you are already listed. It only needs the connections required for the actions you choose to allow. If a system is not listed, we check the available connection before recommending a route. **How long does connecting take?** Usually days rather than months because nothing is rebuilt or migrated. The exact time depends on the systems involved and whether your rules fit the standard playbook. Assisted and Selfe-Made exist for the cases where connecting is straightforward but agreeing what should happen is not. **Do we need anybody technical?** Not for the standard route. You need access to the systems that take payment and hold your calendar, stock or orders, plus somebody who can say when the resulting record is right. Where a private system or custom integration is involved, we identify that before anything is agreed. **How much of our time does this take?** Self and Assisted mainly ask you to review what Selfe found and correct the exceptions. Selfe-Made asks about two hours a week for twelve weeks, one session and the report before it, because we do the work and you make the calls we cannot. It is judgement about your own business rather than a second project for your team to run. **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. **How accurate is Selfe?** Selfe does not present every claim as certain. Each important fact carries its source, freshness and confidence. When sources disagree or evidence is missing, it shows the gap and follows your rule. It can use the best-supported answer, hold it back or ask you. **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 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 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. **What if all of this looks different in a year?** The assistants and protocols will change. Your underlying record should not need rebuilding every time they do. Selfe keeps the Echo separate from any one channel and maintains the connections around it, so a new surface can read the same business instead of starting the work again. **What happens if we stop using Selfe?** The systems you already ran continue as before because none of them was replaced. Your Selfe stops answering and acting, and you can export the current Echo before you go. Your website, bookings, orders and payment account are not held inside Selfe. **What does Selfe cost?** Self and Assisted are monthly platform routes; Selfe-Made adds a fixed twelve-week programme on top of whichever subscription is yours. Completed sales that Selfe creates may also carry a transaction charge. The current figures and what each route includes are kept together on Get Started so the commercial terms are not scattered across the site. **Why charge a percentage at all?** Because part of the value only exists when a sale completes. A transaction charge puts that part of our return on the same side of the arithmetic as yours. It applies to an attributable sale completed through Selfe, not simply to every order appearing in a system you connected. **Is that instead of card fees, or on top?** On top. Your payment provider still processes the money into your account and charges its normal fee. Selfe never becomes the merchant or holds your proceeds. Its transaction charge is for creating and completing the attributable sale, not for moving the card payment. **Our margins are thin. Does the transaction charge still work?** It depends on what you normally spend to create that sale. Compare it with the real acquisition cost: advertising, agency fees, marketplace commission, discounts and staff time. A customer who was already buying directly should not become a charged Selfe sale; the relevant comparison is the incremental sale Selfe created. **How does this compare with a marketplace or booking channel?** A marketplace is a destination that brings the customer, controls the journey and usually keeps the relationship. Selfe makes your own business available wherever the customer's agent is asking; the sale lands in your system and the customer remains yours. They can work alongside each other, but the economics and ownership are different. **Is this saying we should leave the channels?** No. Channels earn their place when they introduce demand you would not otherwise reach. Selfe adds another direct route and makes it easier to complete sales without handing over the customer. The sensible question is which sales genuinely needed a channel and which could have completed with you. **Is there a free tier?** The readiness and catalogue checks are free. A live Selfe is not, because it continuously maintains a business record, answers requests and can act against connected systems. The free checks are there to establish whether there is anything worth fixing before you choose a paid route. **Should we choose Self, Assisted or Selfe-Made?** Choose Self when the standard connections and playbook fit. Choose Assisted when you want us to check the setup or the systems are less straightforward. Choose Selfe-Made when the difficult part is agreeing custom rules across people, properties, products or approval layers. You end up on the same platform in all three. **Can we start on our own and get help later?** Yes. Starting with Self and moving to Assisted or Selfe-Made is a normal route. Having a live Echo in front of you often makes the useful questions much clearer than trying to design every rule before anything is connected. **What happens after we contact you?** A person reads what you sent and works out whether Self, Assisted or Selfe-Made is the honest route. If a listed connection or standard setup fits, we say so. If something needs checking, we ask about that rather than putting you into a generic sales sequence. **Is Selfe-Made consultancy?** It is twelve weeks with an end date on it, and we do the work inside them. The difference from consultancy is which direction it points. An arrangement that sells you more hours next quarter is one thing; this is priced and scoped to leave you running it yourself, on a subscription, with the playbook and the reasoning behind it yours to keep. **What happens when the twelve weeks end?** Your Selfe keeps running and the playbook, including the reasoning behind it, remains yours. You leave knowing what it can settle, what it should escalate and which numbers matter. You carry on with the subscription you would have been paying anyway, and nothing stops working if you go quiet. ## 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.