Agent Legal Context Protocol
An open standard for discovering the legal context of agentic commerce transactions.
The Agent Legal Context Protocol (ALC) is an open standard for discovering legal context in agentic commerce. It defines a single well-known URI — /.well-known/legal-context.json — where any service publishes a reference to its legal terms. The standard requires no specific technology: no blockchain, no cryptography, no API, no third-party service. Any web server can implement it.
For the conceptual framework motivating this standard — why agentic commerce requires legal context and what that means — see the companion white paper, "Identity, Trust, and the Legal Foundations of Agentic Commerce" (Fisher & McCormack, 2026).
The Problem
AI agents are transacting autonomously, but every commerce protocol defers the legal layer. Legal terms are scattered across /terms, /tos, /legal/terms-of-service, buried in PDFs, or absent entirely. There is no convention. An agent visiting a new service has no standard way to find the terms governing a transaction. The discoverability problem is foundational — without it, nothing else is possible.
The White Paper
The white paper defines the conceptual framework: four layers of trust — Human Identity, Entity Attestation, Agreement Integrity, and Agent Authorization — that compose into robust trust across the full lifecycle of agent interaction. Three design principles govern the architecture: built with institutions, open not owned, and proportional not maximal. The ALC standard is the practical instrument that makes the Agreement Integrity layer discoverable.
The Standard
One file. Two required fields. A service publishes /.well-known/legal-context.json containing a protocol version and a URL to its legal terms. The legal terms are a standalone, downloadable document. Everything else is optional. Any company can adopt the standard in five minutes.
Levels of Trust
Beyond the standard location, the specification suggests four levels of trust assurance — each independently valuable, each building naturally on the capabilities below it:
| Level | Name | What It Adds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Informational | Agent finds terms; proceeding = consent |
| 2 | Provable | Content hash proves the exact document |
| 3 | Signed | Digital signature proves explicit intent |
| 4 | Integrated | Hooks to legal infrastructure (dispute resolution, escrow, compliance) |
Transaction-Time Verification
The key innovation. There are two distinct moments — discovery time and transaction time — and the correct moment to fetch, verify, and save terms is at transaction time. Every major agentic commerce protocol has a two-phase flow (propose, then execute), and the content hash belongs in the proposal phase, allowing the agent to verify before it pays.
Read more: Transaction-Time Verification
Protocol Integration
The standard integrates with existing agentic commerce protocols through their native extension mechanisms. No protocol requires core specification changes. Integration patterns are defined for MPP, ACP, x402, UCP, Visa TAP, A2A/MCP, AP2, and Mastercard Agent Pay using the alc: prefix format and the legalContext JSON key.
Read more: Protocol Integration
Reference Implementation
Integra provides one reference implementation of the standard, featuring on-chain existence proofs (IntegraExistence, IntegraRecord), composable resolver contracts, server-side middleware for zero-latency integration, IPFS document preservation, and ADR backed by the American Arbitration Association. The standard defines the interface; implementations provide the capability.
Read more: Reference Implementation
In Practice
Maria Santos, VP of Procurement at a Delaware hospital network, uses an AI agent to purchase a $185,000 MRI scanner from a German manufacturer. Seven weeks later, the wrong equipment arrives. Every layer of the standard — from discoverable terms to content hashing to dispute resolution — proves its value in resolving the dispute.