Sierra Releases Poppy 1.0, Its Personal Agent Protocol, With Shopify on Board

What happened

Under Poppy, a company publishes a poppy.json file under its domain stating how a visiting personal agent should identify itself, sign in and what it may do; the agent reads the file and gets permission first, then works through the company's business agent, website or APIs. Sierra and Meta announced the protocol on Oct 6 and published the first draft on Oct 9; version 1.0 is the stable release five weeks after the draft.

Shopify is the widest rollout: every merchant on its platform now publishes a Poppy file automatically, with no extra work for merchants, covering stores in more than 175 countries. Shopify also co-authored Poppy's commerce extension, linking it to its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): Poppy handles the agent's arrival and authorization, while UCP handles product discovery, carts and checkout.

Meta's Muse is the other end: Sierra said Muse looks for Poppy first on every site it visits, so any company that implements the protocol can have Muse follow its rules on arrival. Design partners now total more than 100, with 60 new ones including Cisco, Delta Air Lines, Intuit, Salesforce, Twilio and Zoom; Mercury, Synchrony and Turkish Airlines are already live. The specification itself is still labeled draft 1.0, and later changes may break backward compatibility.

Key facts

1. Release: Version 1.0 released Nov 13; developed by Sierra and Meta, announced Oct 6, first draft published Oct 9
2. Mechanism: Companies publish a file at /.well-known/poppy.json; the agent identifies itself and gets permission before acting
3. Shopify: Switched on by default for every merchant, covering more than 175 countries; co-authored the commerce extension, linked to UCP
4. Muse: Meta's personal agent looks for Poppy first on every site it visits; more than 10 million users
5. Partners: Design partners total more than 100, with 60 new ones; Mercury, Synchrony and Turkish Airlines are live
6. Status: The specification is still labeled draft 1.0; later changes may break backward compatibility