Your customers' AI agents need house rules.

What the new Poppy draft means for a small business, and the three access levels to set first.

What Sierra published

On October 9, 2026, Sierra's Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor published a draft of Personal Agent Protocol, known as Poppy. Sierra had announced the protocol that Tuesday with Meta, Genesys, Instinct, NiCE, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart. With the draft, it named 35 more design partners, among them OpenAI, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Target, who Sierra says "will participate in the design process."

A personal agent is an AI assistant that acts for one person: it shops, books or sorts out a problem for them. Poppy is a proposed standard for how such an agent tells a business who it is and what it is allowed to do. In Sierra's words, it "is built on the principle that customers decide what access to give their personal agents, and companies set parameters for what those agents can do."

It is a draft, not a product. The specification is labeled draft 0.1, and it says "Any part of it can change before a stable version." Sierra says it will hold design workshops over the next month and publish a reference implementation.

Figure: Sierra's diagram of the protocol. Personal agents connect through Personal Agent Protocol, and the business sets its rules across its website, its APIs and its own agent. Image: Sierra, Sharing a draft of Personal Agent Protocol (Oct 9, 2026).

How it works, per the draft

01
Discovery.
A business publishes one file on its website, at /.well-known/poppy.json, that tells agents how to work with it, how customers sign in and what an agent can do.
02
Sessions.
An agent can start as a guest, which Sierra says may be enough to check stock or ask about a returns policy. The agent identifies itself, so the business always knows when an agent is acting for a customer.
03
Sign-in.
When a task needs the customer's account, the customer signs in on the business's own page through OAuth. The agent then gets only the access the customer approved. The spec defines broad "read" and "write" access, and lets a business decide which tasks need each or define narrower ones.
04
One session, your channels.
The business chooses whether agents use its website, its APIs or an agent of its own, and the same session carries across them. Sierra says it is built on OAuth, JSON Web Tokens, HTTPS, OpenAPI and MCP.

Sierra's own example shows what a business controls. A customer asks their agent to return a jacket. The agent identifies itself, the customer signs in once, and the agent uses the retailer's regular returns page. The retailer "lets it start a return but not change the payment details on file." The spec also lets a business keep lists of agents it allows or blocks, and limit how often they can make requests.

Illustration of a personal agent visiting a store. The agent identifies itself as acting for a customer and checks stock and the returns policy as a guest. The customer signs in once on the store page through OAuth, and the agent gets only the access the customer approved. The store allows starting a return but not changing payment details. Four cards: 35 more design partners added Oct 9; one poppy.json discovery file; built on OAuth, JWTs, HTTPS, OpenAPI and MCP; three channels: website, APIs or your own agent. — Figure: Sierra's jacket-return example, redrawn as an illustration (not a product screenshot), with four details from the draft. Protocol details are per Sierra's Oct 9, 2026 post and the Poppy draft spec.

Why it matters to a small business

Customers' agents are already trying to shop. In September, Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from Amazon.com. Amazon told Adweek it had not been told in advance or asked to authorize it, and that the agent "does not identify itself." Poppy is one proposal for the opposite: agents that say who they are and act within limits the business sets.

Nothing here says when, or whether, the website or store platform you use will support Poppy. You do not need to build anything yet. What you can do now is decide your rules, so you are ready when agents start asking.

Big number 35: additional design partners named on the day the draft was published, with a donut showing 35 of 43 companies named so far. A bar chart: 8 at launch, 35 on draft day, 43 total. Three cards: agents say who they are; simple asks with no sign-in; only approved access. — Figure: the companies Sierra has named so far, 8 at the Tuesday announcement and 35 more on Oct 9, and the draft's core ideas. Counts are from Sierra's Oct 9, 2026 post; the Amazon and Muse dispute is per Adweek.

Three access levels to set first

01
Guest OK.
What any agent may ask without a sign-in: stock, hours, your returns policy and other public information.
02
Sign-in needed.
What an agent may do only after the customer signs in and approves it: order status, bookings, starting a return.
03
Never allowed.
What no agent may do, such as changing payment details, the draft's own example. Add your own.
04
And one named reviewer.
One person owns the list, reviews agent activity weekly and updates the rules. Loosen a rule only when the customer is signed in and the task is easy to undo. Tighten it right away when an agent does something unexpected or a customer complains.

A four-step ladder. Level 1, guest OK: no sign-in, stock, hours, returns policy, public info. Level 2, sign-in needed: order status, bookings, starting a return, after the customer signs in. Level 3, never allowed: changing payment details, add your own. Level 4, named reviewer: one person reviews agent activity weekly and updates the list. Below: loosen a rule only when the customer is signed in and the task is easy to undo; tighten it right away when an agent does something unexpected or a customer complains. This week: list your top 10 requests, sort each into a level, ask your platform whether it plans to support Poppy. — Figure: the access levels as a ladder, when to loosen or tighten a rule, and a three-step checklist for this week. The payment-details example is from Sierra's draft; the levels and checklist are Consultiply guidance.

This week

List the ten things customers ask you most, from email, chat and phone. Sort each into guest OK, sign-in needed or never allowed. Then ask whoever runs your website or online store whether they plan to support Poppy.

Our take

Put AI to work on your terms: let agents in through the front door, with rules you wrote down first. The draft will change, but the questions it asks of a business will not.

No partnership with Sierra is implied here. This is an owner's reading of Sierra's draft and the coverage around it.