The Problem
Every agentic commerce protocol defers the legal layer. Discoverability is the foundational gap.
For agentic commerce to reach its full potential, transactions need legal context.
AI agents are transacting autonomously — purchasing services, accessing APIs, executing procurement, settling payments. The payment infrastructure works. The commerce protocols work. The identity protocols work. But none of them address what happens when a transaction goes wrong: what were the terms? Did the counterparty consent? What is the dispute process? Who has jurisdiction?
The Gap
The companion white paper defines what legal context means for the agentic era:
- Jurisdiction — every transaction must be connected to a governing legal framework
- Terms — recorded permanently, independently verifiable, controlled by neither party
- Temporal obligations — liability allocation, performance standards, breach remedies, implied warranties, and method of recourse that extend beyond the moment of exchange
- Evidentiary integrity — a neutral, independently verifiable record
- Intent — connection back to human deliberation and consent
Today, none of this is discoverable. An agent transacting with a service has no standard way to find the legal context governing that transaction.
Every Protocol Defers the Legal Layer
The major agentic commerce protocols solve the purchase transaction — discovery, negotiation, checkout, payment, fulfillment. They all defer the same structural questions.
| Feature | ALC | MPP | ACP | UCP | x402 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terms discovery | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Terms identified by hash | Level 2+ | No | No | No | No |
| Explicit acceptance | Level 3 | No | No | Partial | No |
| Dispute resolution | Level 4 | No | No | No | No |
| Payment processing | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Checkout lifecycle | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Agent identity | No | No | Partial | Partial | No |
ALC is complementary to all of these protocols. It provides the legal layer that each defers.
The Discoverability Problem
Legal terms are scattered:
/terms,/tos,/legal/terms-of-service,/about/legal- A PDF buried three clicks deep
- A footer link to a different domain
- Nowhere at all
An agent visiting a new service has no idea where to find the terms. A human barely knows. There is no convention.
/.well-known/legal-context.json creates the convention: legal terms are always in the same place.
This is the entire value of the standard. Everything else — hashing, verification, on-chain anchoring, dispute resolution — is what you can build on top of discoverability. But discoverability is the foundation, and it requires zero technology beyond a web server serving a JSON file.
Further Reading
For the full conceptual treatment of why agentic commerce needs legal context, see the companion white paper: Trust in Depth.