Sierra and Meta plan permission rules for personal AI agents
Sierra and Meta are developing a protocol that lets personal AI agents connect to businesses with customer authorization. Customers would choose read or write access, while businesses decide which operations they offer. The first specification is planned for later in October. Payment extensions and more detailed permissions remain future work.
Artificial Intelligence··Midday
Customers and businesses would set separate permissions
Sierra, an AI customer-service company, and Meta are developing Personal Agent Protocol to connect personal AI agents with businesses. The proposed standard covers authentication, customer authorization and visibility into agent activity. Sierra co-founders Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor announced the project on 6 October; its first specification is planned for later this month.[1], [2]
Under the proposal, a customer would decide whether an agent can read an account or make changes to it. The business would separately choose which operations to expose. Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart are participating in the work, bringing customer-service, commerce and payment businesses into development of the specification.[1]
A guest visit could become an authorized account session
A personal agent would first discover the services and connection routes on a business website. Checking stock or reading a returns policy could begin as a guest visit. When account access is needed, the customer could sign in on the business’s page or use credentials previously arranged with the agent, then authorize the relevant access.[1]
Sessions would rely on OAuth, an existing authorization standard, and continue across different interaction channels. A question before sign-in and an order change afterwards would remain part of the same visit. Businesses could provide ordinary web pages, software interfaces or their own service agents, allowing the customer’s agent to use the route the business supports.[1]
Payment extensions follow the initial specification
The available routes include interfaces using Model Context Protocol, which connects AI software to tools, and OpenAPI, a format for describing software interfaces. A warranty claim illustrates a task that may require a conversation with the business’s own agent rather than a single call. The protocol is intended to accommodate these different ways of completing one customer request.[1]
After the first specification, the organizers plan design workshops and a reference implementation. More granular permissions, notices about delayed flights or shipped orders, and payments without sharing card details are among possible extensions. Those plans concern later development: the October announcement begins work on the specification, with the first version still scheduled for release.[1]
