Universal Commerce Protocol
What is UCP?
Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is Shopify's open infrastructure for enabling AI agents to participate in commerce. It provides standardized APIs, data formats, and interaction patterns that allow AI systems to search products, understand availability and pricing, and facilitate purchases across millions of merchants.
Think of UCP as the “roads and signage” for AI shopping. Just as humans need storefronts, search bars, and checkout flows to shop online, AI agents need structured data and APIs to do the same. UCP provides that infrastructure.
Why Does UCP Matter?
The way people shop is changing. Instead of visiting individual stores or browsing marketplaces, users increasingly ask AI assistants for help. “Find me a good laptop for video editing under $1500” or “What's the best gift for a 10-year-old who likes science?”
Without protocols like UCP, AI agents can only scrape websites or use limited search APIs. With UCP, they have direct access to structured product data, real-time inventory, verified pricing, and merchant information—everything needed to make informed recommendations.
For Merchants: Why Participate?
New Discovery Channel
Your products become discoverable through AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Gemini. This is a new acquisition channel beyond traditional SEO and paid ads.
Qualified Traffic
AI agents send users who are ready to buy. When an AI recommends your product, the user has already described their needs and the AI has matched them to your offering.
Future-Proofing
As more shopping moves to AI-assisted channels, merchants on UCP are positioned to capture that demand. Early participation builds visibility as the ecosystem grows.
For Developers: Why Build on UCP?
Access to Millions of Products
The Catalog API gives you instant access to product data from Shopify's merchant base. No need to negotiate individual partnerships or scrape websites.
Built for AI
UCP is designed for AI integration from the ground up. Semantic search, structured data, and MCP compatibility make it easy to build AI shopping experiences.
Real-Time Data
Product data stays synchronized with merchant catalogs. Pricing, availability, and inventory reflect current state, not stale snapshots.
UCP and the Catalog API
The Catalog API is the primary interface for product discovery within UCP. It provides federated search across all participating merchants, with filtering for price, category, availability, and more.
Catalog Search (this tool) is a reference implementation showing how to query and display results from the Catalog API. Developers can use it to understand response formats and generate curl commands for their own integrations.
Where This Is Headed
Agentic commerce is in its early stages. Today, AI assistants can search and recommend products. Tomorrow, they'll handle increasingly complex purchase flows—comparing options across dimensions, negotiating on behalf of users, and managing subscriptions.
UCP is Shopify's bet on this future. By building open infrastructure now, they're positioning Shopify merchants to benefit as AI shopping becomes mainstream.
- Integration with major AI platforms (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic)
- Expanded checkout capabilities for AI-facilitated purchases
- Richer product data including reviews, Q&A, and merchant reputation
- Tools for merchants to optimize their catalog for AI discovery