ArcReport/arc-agent-commerce

3,335 online stores checked: can AI shopping agents reach checkout at them?

Snapshot 2026-10-12.r3: 3,335 stores, checked 6 Oct 2026 to 12 Oct 2026. The check finished for 3,318 of them (17 did not respond in time and are marked not_tested). Percentages below are of those 3,318.

	Stores	Share
AI agents can get a checkout link through the store's agent connection	1,311	39.5%
AI agents can search products through an agent connection	1,488	44.8%
No agent connection found: no product search, no valid UCP profile, not blocked (agents must click through the site like a person)	1,425	42.9%
Bot protection blocked ARC's agent check	348	10.5%
Publishes a valid Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) profile	1,601	48.3%
Shopify stores with a checkout link agents can use	1,266 of 1,561	81.1%
Stores not detected as Shopify with a checkout link agents can use	45 of 1,757	2.6%
robots.txt blocks at least one AI crawler (of 2,994 readable robots.txt files)	153	5.1%
robots.txt blocks AI assistants fetching pages for a user (same base)	101	3.4%

All rows come from ARC's automated HTTP check. 82 stores also have a browser cart test (browser_cart_test). A checkout link is not a completed order: ARC never pays or places an order.

A free, open, per-store answer to one question: can an AI shopping agent find products and reach checkout at this store? Published by ARC at arcreport.ai/data under CC-BY-4.0. One frozen canonical snapshot per week. Cite the version folder, not latest/. The US checkout citation is canonicalUsCheckout in src/lib/dataset/canonical.ts, which reads latest/manifest.json and that version's store_answers.csv. The process is in docs/runbooks/canonical-snapshot.md. Nothing there is automated.

ARC is a free, neutral, CC BY open dataset and benchmark of how well online stores work with AI shopping agents, with a free advisory precheck API and an MCP connector.

Links

• Site: https://www.arcreport.ai/?ref=huggingface
• Connector (MCP): https://www.arcreport.ai/mcp?ref=huggingface
• Free API, no key: /api/ask (https://www.arcreport.ai/api/ask) and the advisory precheck:

curl 'https://www.arcreport.ai/api/precheck?url=https://allbirds.com'

Precheck results are advisory: they say whether an agent is likely to reach checkout. ARC stops before payment.

Headline numbers for each snapshot are in summary.json and manifest.json (headline), and at the top of arcreport.ai/data. summary.json is computed from store_answers.csv.

Count	Meaning
attempted	Every row in store_answers.csv. One store ARC attempted.
completed	The check finished (can_agents_get_checkout_link is yes or no). Every percentage uses this denominator.
failed	The check did not finish (not_tested).
stores_checked	The same number as completed. The protocol matrix UCP and MCP denominator on the current snapshot is this same completed count.

Valid UCP profile, US stores

Snapshot 2026-10-12.r3, US stores with completed checks, n=1,271

Shopify: 660 of 693 (95.2%). Non-Shopify: 50 of 578 (8.7%). All US: 710 of 1,271 (55.9%). A valid /.well-known UCP profile was served, not that checkout works.

Counted from store_answers.csv in snapshot 2026-10-12.r3. market is United States. A completed check is can_agents_get_checkout_link of yes or no. Shopify is platform equal to Shopify. Non-Shopify is every other platform value, including Not detected and empty. The numerator is ucp_profile_valid yes.

Start with store_answers: one row per store, plain yes/no answers, a one-sentence verdict, the single most useful fix, and a link to the store's page on ARC with the details.

Column dictionary: store_answers

Column	What it means
domain	The store's website, without www.
store_name	Store name from ARC's curated list. Empty for stores added by the public.
category	What the store sells (ARC's label). Empty when ARC has not labelled it.
platform	Shop software detected from the homepage (for example Shopify). "Not detected" means no known fingerprint (often a custom site). Empty means the homepage could not be read.
market	Where the storefront sells (ARC's curated label, not measured). Empty when not labelled.
checked_at	Date (UTC) of the latest automated check.
can_agents_find_products	Could an AI agent search the store's products through a machine-readable agent connection and get a product back (the specific product, for the ~90 Index stores where ARC tests one)? yes / no / blocked (the store returned a block to ARC's automated HTTP check on checked_at; this is a response to ARC's checker, not a finding against the store) / not_tested (the check did not finish). "no" is about agent connections only: an agent may still click through the website like a person.
can_agents_read_price_and_stock	Does the product page ARC opened list price and stock in structured data agents can read (schema.org Product)? yes / no / not_tested (no product page could be opened).
can_agents_get_checkout_link	Did the agent connection hand back a checkout link for a product it returned? yes / no / not_tested. ARC stops there: it never pays or places an order, so "yes" means an agent can reach checkout, not that an order was placed.
agent_catalog_type	Which agent connection answered with a product search tool: Shopify UCP MCP, Shopify Storefront MCP, or none.
ucp_profile_valid	Does the store publish a valid Universal Commerce Protocol profile at /.well-known/ucp? yes / no / unknown (blocked or errored). A valid profile is stricter than publishes_ucp_file: it needs a dated version and a shopping service.
publishes_ucp_file	Does the store publish a UCP file at /.well-known/ucp? yes = HTTP 200 and JSON with a version plus services or capabilities. no = HTTP 404 or 410. unknown = HTTP 403, 429, 5xx, a timeout, or a response that was not JSON. Empty means this check is not recorded. Unknown and empty never count as no. This means the store publishes a UCP file. It does not mean an agent can reach checkout there.
ucp_file_checked_at	UTC date of the /.well-known/ucp file check. Empty when that check is not recorded.
webmcp	Does the homepage declare WebMCP tools for in-browser agents? yes / no / not_tested (checks before 6 Oct 2026).
blocks_ai_crawlers	Does robots.txt disallow at least one of the AI crawlers ARC tracks (answer, search or training bots) from the homepage or tested product? yes / no / unknown (robots.txt could not be read). A rule in a file, not an observed block.
blocks_ai_answer_agents	Same, but only for AI assistants fetching pages for a user (for example ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User). yes / no / unknown.
browser_cart_test	Result of ARC's separate browser cart test, where it exists (about 90 stores): for example "2 of 5 added to cart". Empty means no browser test.
verdict	A plain answer to "can AI agents reach checkout at this store?", the same sentence as the store's ARC page. The strongest answer is "AI agents can reach checkout": ARC's agent got a checkout link. ARC always stops before paying, so it never claims more than reached checkout.
top_fix	The most useful change for the store, in plain words, the same as the first fix on its ARC page. Empty when nothing is needed.
checked_by	How the answer was measured: "automated HTTP check" or "automated HTTP check + browser cart test".
evidence_url	The store's page on ARC with the full details.
tested_url	The page the check started from: the homepage for most stores, one product page for Index stores (query string removed).
source	How the store got into ARC: index (weekly browser Index), directory (ARC's curated list), submitted (added by the public) or checked (one-off check).
snapshot_date	Date of this snapshot.
method_version	Version of ARC's method used.
direct_agent_integration	Public files an agent can read without an account: detected, not_found, or unknown. Empty means not recorded. Unknown and empty are not a no. A detected file is not a claim that an agent can reach checkout.
direct_agent_integration_checked_at	UTC date of that file check. Empty when not recorded.
guest_checkout_offered	During the no-payment checkout check: yes, no, or unknown. Empty means not recorded. ARC does not create an account. Unknown and empty are not a no.
account_creation_required	Whether that page required an account and did not offer guest checkout. yes / no / unknown. Empty means not recorded.
account_signup_without_captcha_or_phone	Whether a signup form was already on the page with no captcha and no phone check. yes / no / unknown. ARC does not open or submit the form.
account_guest_checked_at	UTC date of the account and guest reading. Empty when not recorded.
block_reason	Recorded reason for a block on the automated HTTP check: robots_disallow, bot_wall, tls, or other. Empty when the check was not blocked, when no reason was recorded, or on a snapshot exported before this column. Empty is not a bot wall. Bot protection or a bot wall is named only when this cell is bot_wall. A block is a response to ARC's checker, not a finding against the store.

How it is measured

Two separate methods. Every row says which one it comes from (checked_by).

1. Automated HTTP check (every store). A plain program, not an AI model and not a browser, requests the store's machine-readable shopping interfaces the way an agent would: the Universal Commerce Protocol profile at /.well-known/ucp, Shopify's agent catalog endpoints (/api/ucp/mcp, /api/mcp), a product search, and the cart step that returns a checkout link. It also reads the homepage (platform fingerprint, WebMCP tags) and robots.txt. It identifies itself, runs at most about once per host per week, and never pays or places an order.
2. Browser cart test (fewer than 100 Index stores only). Five ARC browser test shoppers each try to put one real product in the cart through the normal website, stopping before payment. Shown in browser_cart_test. These are ARC's own test runs, not sessions of any named consumer AI product.

Limitations (please read before citing)

• Cite a figure with its n, its denominator, and its snapshot. Field names, numerators, and what each headline count does not prove: metrics glossary.
• A checkout link is not a completed order. ARC stops at the link. "yes" means an agent could reach checkout through the store's agent connection on the check date, not that an order would succeed.
• "no" is about agent connections only. A store without one can still be used by an agent that clicks through the website like a person. Our browser cart test covers that, but only for fewer than 100 stores.
• One check, one moment. Each answer is the store's latest check (dates in checked_at). Stores and stock change; a single failed check can be temporary.
• "blocked" means the store returned a block to ARC's automated HTTP check on checked_at. This is a response to ARC's checker, not a finding against the store. Real agents may or may not be treated the same way. Bot protection or a bot wall is named only when block_reason is bot_wall.
• robots.txt is a rule in a file, not an observed block. Bots may ignore it, and firewalls may block bots that robots.txt allows.
• The store list is a sample, not all of e-commerce. It is ARC's curated directory plus stores the public submitted. It leans toward English-language, direct-to-consumer brands and toward Shopify.
• Labels such as category and market are ARC's curated labels, not measurements.
• not_tested and unknown are used only where there is genuinely no result; they never mean "no".

Other tables

The full technical detail stays available alongside store_answers:

Table	One row per	What it holds
rails_checks	Store	The raw fields of the automated HTTP check (UCP profile status, MCP endpoints, catalog tool, cart status, WebMCP, platform id, evidence label)
stores	Index store	Browser cart test results: score, test shoppers that added to cart, failure label, per-persona outcome
adoption_history	Week × source × metric	Weekly counts
protocol_matrix	Protocol × stage	Declared / Valid / Usable / Transacts counts per protocol
personas	Browser test shopper	The five browser test personas

Field reference for the technical tables is below. Method and changelog: arcreport.ai/methodology.

What is excluded

No scraped page text or product copy, no model-written prose, no costs, no emails, accounts or visitor data. Only ARC's own answers, signals, URLs and dates. OpenStreetMap-derived directory rows are left out: they are ODbL share-alike, and this dataset stays CC-BY-4.0.

Older snapshots in /data/history can include OpenStreetMap-derived hosts. Those hosts are © OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database License (ODbL), not CC-BY-4.0. Current CC-BY exports leave those hosts out.

Hugging Face card (abab7575/arc-open docs/dataset-card.md, same paragraph): OpenStreetMap-derived directory rows are left out of this CC-BY-4.0 dataset because they are ODbL share-alike. Older snapshots in /data/history can include those hosts. Those hosts are © OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database License (ODbL), not CC-BY-4.0.

License & attribution

The data ARC publishes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0).

• Cite as: ARC (arcreport.ai). Link: https://www.arcreport.ai (dataset: https://www.arcreport.ai/data).
• Terms: https://www.arcreport.ai/terms.
• Snapshot 2026-10-12.r2 includes 203 OpenStreetMap-derived rows under the ODbL-1.0. Attribution: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Later snapshots leave those rows out.
• Third-party data is not relicensed. Tranco ranks and lists are not published and are not licensed by ARC.
• Wikidata-derived fields are CC0.
• Host names discovered via Common Crawl: source cited as Common Crawl (commoncrawl.org).
• Unpublished discovery-source data is excluded. Hosts that opted out are excluded.
• CC BY 4.0 covers only ARC's own measurements.
• Results are advisory. ARC stops before payment.
• Code is MIT (github.com/abab7575/arc-open).

Contact: arcreport@mail.grokbot.com. Store owners can ask for a correction or removal at arcreport.ai/contact.

Files and versioning

Each snapshot lives in its own immutable version folder and is copied to latest/. Every table comes as CSV and Parquet, with a manifest.json holding row counts, headline numbers, snapshot_version, generated_at (UTC) and supersedes.

Versioning

• A version folder never changes once published. The first export on a date is YYYY-MM-DD/; any later export on the same date is published as YYYY-MM-DD.r2/, YYYY-MM-DD.r3/ and so on. The exporter refuses to overwrite an existing version.
• latest/ is a moving copy of the newest version. To cite exact numbers, cite the version folder (for example /data/2026-10-07.r5/), not latest/. On 13 Oct 2026 the answer text was corrected in latest/store_answers and in the 2026-10-09 and 2026-10-12 folders. 2026-10-09 has no OpenStreetMap-derived rows. 2026-10-12.r2 is mixed licence (CC BY 4.0, except 203 OpenStreetMap-derived rows under ODbL-1.0, attributed to OpenStreetMap contributors). 2026-10-12.r3 drops those rows and is the CC BY 4.0 edition latest/ cites. Neither date's folders contain unpublished discovery-source rows. See the erratum in /data/history/README.md.
• versions.json lists every version with its generated_at, supersedes, method version, stores checked and row counts.
• Before this rule (7 Oct 2026), /data/2026-10-07/ was regenerated four times during the day (rails_checks went from 607 to 647 to 1,044 rows). All five published versions are restored byte-for-byte from the commits that published them, as 2026-10-07/ (r1) to 2026-10-07.r5/; their manifests carry restored.source_commit.

Technical tables: field reference

The technical tables carry snapshot_date, method_version and evidence (measured or inferred).

stores

Field	Meaning
slug, store_name, domain, category	Store identity from ARC's public Index list
homepage_url, product_url	The store homepage and the one product the checkout check starts from (query strings removed)
score	ARC compatibility score, 0–100. Empty when a retest is pending
agents_chose, agents_total	How many ARC browser personas added the product to the cart, out of how many
failure_reason	Fixed label for where agents stopped (e.g. Blocked at the size picker), Added to cart (stopped before payment) when every shopper got the product into the cart (ARC never pays; older snapshots said Finished the purchase), or other
persona_a … persona_e	Per-persona outcome: chose, missed or error. These are ARC browser shopper personas run on ARC-chosen models, not named consumer agents. Legacy alias ids (muse, instinct, grok, openai-dots, openclaw) are in personas.csv (legacy_alias_id)
index_week, scanned_at	ISO week and UTC time of the scan
evidence	measured when all five shoppers ran and a score exists; inferred otherwise

rails_checks

Field	Meaning
domain, slug, category, product_url	Store checked and the product page used (query strings removed; cart URLs are never stored)
status	completed or failed
webmcp, storefront_mcp, ucp_mcp	Whether each interface was detected. webmcp is empty (not measured) for checks before 18:00 UTC on 6 Oct 2026, when detection started
catalog_tool, catalog_found	Catalog tool exposed and whether it returned the product
cart_status	link, unavailable, not_offered, error or skipped
ucp_profile	/.well-known/ucp validity: valid, invalid, absent, blocked or error. Stricter than ucp_file.
ucp_file	/.well-known/ucp file: detected (HTTP 200 JSON with a version plus services or capabilities), not_found (404 or 410), unknown (403, 429, 5xx, timeout or non-JSON), or empty when not recorded. Empty and unknown are not a no. This is a published file, not proof an agent can reach checkout.
mcp_blocked	The store blocked the MCP request
checked_at	UTC time of the check
evidence	measured for a clean completed check; inferred when blocked, errored or failed
source	index (ARC Index store), directory (curated list), submitted (added by the public via /agent-checkout/submit, the API or MCP, after validation) or checked (one-off check only)

adoption_history

week (ISO), source (index or rails), metric (e.g. stores_scored, mean_score, stores_any_persona_carted, ucp_profile_valid, ucp_file_detected, ucp_file_not_found, ucp_file_unknown, cart_link, webmcp, webmcp_measured) and value. The UCP file adoption count is ucp_file_detected out of ucp_file_detected plus ucp_file_not_found. ucp_file_unknown is separate. A missing result is not counted.

One definition with stores: index metrics use the latest completed scan per published Index store within the week, so the current week matches stores exactly. Rails metrics count each host once per week (its latest attempt that week). webmcp counts only checks after detection began; its denominator is webmcp_measured.

personas

persona, label, style, legacy_alias_id, method_version.

protocol_matrix

See arcreport.ai/protocols.

Host discovery sources

Checker host lists may include hostnames found in the Common Crawl columnar URL index (cc-index: plus the crawl id). Data from Common Crawl (https://commoncrawl.org). Hostnames only. Common Crawl page content is not stored or republished. Common Crawl terms are at https://commoncrawl.org/terms-of-use. Exported source tags are limited to cc-index:, wikidata:, osm:, expansion:, and source:wikidata. Discovery-source, campaign, and source:tranco tags are not exported. A stored source:tranco tag stays on the row.

Files in this snapshot

Mirror of the official ARC open dataset at arcreport.ai/data, updated after each weekly snapshot (Mondays). Files are byte-for-byte copies of ARC's published CSV and Parquet.

Current snapshot: 2026-10-12.r3 (snapshot date 2026-10-12, generated 2026-10-13 19:30 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10).

Config / table	Rows	What it holds
store_answers	3,335	Start here. One row per store in plain words: can AI agents find products and get a checkout link, what blocks them, a one-sentence verdict, top fix, and whether the answer is from the automated HTTP check or also the browser cart test.
stores	89	Latest completed ARC Index result per store (browser cart test: score, personas that carted, failure label).
rails_checks	3,335	Latest HTTP agent check per store domain (UCP profile, WebMCP, storefront MCP, catalog tool, cart link, checkout WebMCP).
adoption_history	32	Weekly aggregate counts by source and metric (long format).
personas	5	The five ARC browser shopper personas (A to E) with legacy alias ids.
protocol_matrix	24	Declared / Valid / Usable / Transacts counts per protocol with evidence labels.

from datasets import load_dataset
answers = load_dataset("ArcReport/arc-agent-commerce", "store_answers", split="train")  # start here

Or just download latest/store_answers.csv.

Versions

• latest/ is the newest snapshot. To cite exact numbers, cite a version folder under versions/ or the Hub tag v<version> (e.g. v2026-10-12.r3), not latest/.

• Version folders never change once published. A second export on the same date is YYYY-MM-DD.r2, .r3 and so on. versions.json lists every version.

• 2026-10-07 (generated 2026-10-07 08:08 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-07.r2 (generated 2026-10-07 11:27 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-07.r3 (generated 2026-10-07 11:41 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-07.r4 (generated 2026-10-07 14:32 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-07.r5 (generated 2026-10-07 19:17 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-09 (generated 2026-10-09 15:47 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-09.r2 (generated 2026-10-09 15:54 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-09.r3 (generated 2026-10-09 16:03 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-12 (generated 2026-10-12 13:34 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-12.r2 (generated 2026-10-12 20:37 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

• 2026-10-12.r3 (generated 2026-10-13 19:30 UTC, method arc-method-2026.10)

Citation

@misc{arc_agent_commerce_index_2026,
  title  = {ARC: can AI shopping agents reach checkout at these stores? Open dataset},
  author = {{ARC}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Snapshot 2026-10-12.r3, method arc-method-2026.10},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/ArcReport/arc-agent-commerce}},
  url    = {https://www.arcreport.ai/data},
  license = {CC-BY-4.0}
}