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Guide · MCP · AI agents

What is an MCP commerce server?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard way to expose tools to AI agents like Claude and GPT. An MCP commerce server exposes the tools an agent needs to transact — catalog, checkout, and orders — so the model can place an order without you hand-wiring a tool schema per provider.

The problem MCP solves

Without a shared protocol, every model wants tools defined its own way, and every integration re-implements auth, schemas, and transport. MCP standardizes that: a server advertises tools and their input schemas, and any MCP-capable client (Claude Desktop, IDEs, agent runtimes) can call them.

What a commerce MCP server exposes

For an agent to buy something, the useful tools are:

Because completion is idempotent, the agent can retry safely — one order, not two. See idempotent orders for AI agents.

Run OrderCore's MCP server

OrderCore ships ordercore-mcp, exposing 10 commerce tools (catalog search, product, prices, inventory, order history, order trace, and the idempotent checkout flow). It is published to npm and listed in the official MCP Registry as ai.ordercore/ordercore-mcp.

Fastest path — no install, no signup. Run it with no API key and it issues a read-only sandbox key for the demo catalog automatically:

terminal
npx @ordercore/mcp

Standalone static binaries are also available from /downloads (macOS arm64 · macOS x64 · Linux · Windows), unzip, then register it with your client.

Claude Code (one command):

terminal
claude mcp add ordercore -- npx -y @ordercore/mcp

That runs read-only against the demo catalog with no key. Add your key to enable checkout:

terminal
claude mcp add ordercore --env ORDERCORE_API_KEY=oc_live_xxx -- npx -y @ordercore/mcp

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) or Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json):

json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ordercore": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ordercore/mcp"],
      "env": { "ORDERCORE_API_KEY": "oc_live_xxx" }
    }
  }
}

No API key yet? Get one in minutes at /bootstrap — no payment required.

Prefer raw HTTP? The same tools are plain REST — the full API is described by the OpenAPI 3.1 spec, and ready-made tool schemas for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are served at /direct-ai/tooling. Full setup: Claude / MCP quickstart.

MCP vs raw REST — which to use

Try it (no signup)

See the tools in action — the demo runs the checkout flow and proves idempotency offline in mock mode:

Run the demo → Quickstart (JS + curl)

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