Discover and connect to a merchant's MCP storefront server for agent-native shopping

Steps

1. Check the merchant's well-known paths for an MCP server manifest: try /.well-known/mcp.json and /llms.txt; the llms.txt file often lists agent-accessible endpoints and their intended use.
2. If an MCP server URL is advertised, initiate an MCP handshake to enumerate available tools (e.g., search_products, get_product_detail, add_to_cart, get_shipping_options).
3. Authenticate to the MCP server using the credential scheme it specifies (typically an API key passed in a header); store the credential securely in your agent's secrets manager, never in source code.
4. Call the product search or catalog browsing tools using structured parameters rather than free-text queries when the server schema permits; structured queries return more reliable, filterable results.
5. Use the server's cart and checkout tools to build a purchase session; follow the tool's returned session identifiers across calls to maintain state.
6. Before acting on tool responses, validate that returned product IDs, prices, and availability match what your monitoring pipeline last observed to detect unexpected changes.