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:

• create_checkout_session — open a checkout for catalog line items
• update_checkout_session — attach buyer and fulfillment details
• create_payment_intent — a payment intent for the session
• complete_checkout_session — create an order, idempotent per session

Run OrderCore's MCP server

OrderCore ships an MCP server backed by short-lived public checkout tokens. Point Claude Desktop (or any MCP client) at it:

ORDERCORE_API_KEY=oc_live_xxx go run ./cmd/ordercore-mcp

Prefer raw HTTP? The same four tools are plain REST, and machine-readable 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

• MCP when your client already speaks it (Claude Desktop, agent runtimes) — zero per-model schema work.
• REST when you're wiring tools yourself or calling from a backend — full control, same endpoints.

Try it (no signup)

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

Related

• How to give your AI agent a checkout tool
• Idempotent orders for AI agents
• OrderCore vs Stripe + a custom order backend
• Full API docs