Sierra Unveils Personal Agent Protocol in Development With Meta and Partners

Sierra on October 6, 2026, announced Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard designed to define how personal AI agents interact with businesses. The company said it is developing the protocol with Meta and industry partners at Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe, and Walmart, with a v0.1 specification planned for later in October 2026.

According to Sierra, the standard is meant to handle authentication, empower consumers, and let companies see what personal agents are doing when they connect through a company’s website, its APIs, or an agent of the company’s own. The protocol is open for anyone to implement. Sierra said it is introducing the standard as consumers turn to personal agents for tasks such as scheduling appointments, booking flights, and shopping for car insurance, and as companies ask how to respect their consumers’ choices while protecting privacy and security.

Why Sierra Says a Standard Is Needed

Most personal agents use websites and apps the way people do, loading pages and clicking through forms, Sierra said. When that approach cannot get the job done, an agent may call the company’s support line or open its web chat, a process the company said can take a long time and can still end in failure. A direct connection, Sierra said, could complete the same task securely in seconds.

For that connection to be adopted at scale, Sierra said it has to work for all parties, which share an interest in security but otherwise have distinct needs. Consumers want speed, dependability, and trust: the job done right the first time by an agent they can count on to act in their best interests. Brands want visibility and control: to know when a personal agent is acting for a customer and to decide for themselves what it can do. Companies building personal agents want efficiency and access: a direct, consistent way to work with participating companies.

Sessions, Access Control, and Connection Routes

Under the principle Sierra described, consumers decide what access to give their personal agents, and companies set parameters for what those agents can do. Each company works with personal agents in the way it judges best for its customers: through its existing website and APIs, or through an agent of its own.

An interaction begins on the company’s website, where the personal agent discovers what the company offers and how to reach it, then begins a session on its user’s behalf. Starting as a guest may be enough to check product availability or ask about a returns policy, Sierra said. When a task requires access to a customer’s account, the customer can sign in on the company’s page or use credentials already set up with the personal agent, and the customer decides whether the agent has read-only or write access.

Sessions are built on OAuth, which Sierra described as an established standard for authorizing access, and they carry across channels, so a question asked before sign-in and an order change made afterward are part of the same visit. From there, the personal agent completes the task through whichever route the company believes offers the best customer experience: the company’s regular web pages; its APIs, through interfaces built on standards such as MCP and OpenAPI; or the company’s own agent, for tasks that need conversation, such as a warranty claim. Sierra said the arrangement means the company decides what it makes available, the personal agent gets a consistent way to connect, and the customer gets a faster way to get things done.

Partner Statements

Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO of Genesys, said personal AI is “creating a new front door to the enterprise.” In his statement, brands need a trusted way to know whom an AI agent represents, what it is authorized to do, and what it intends, so they can work with it securely. He called the protocol an important step toward the shared foundation required in this new era of customer experience.

Shawn Malhotra, Chief Technology Officer of Rocket Companies, said AI’s next era centers on persistent agents that take action, and that Rocket and Redfin are building for that world now. He said the agentic technology Rocket developed with Sierra lets a Muse agent move across the company’s platform in real time, from finding a home to securing financing and beyond, and said no other company has the data, technology, and homeownership ecosystem to make that possible.

Mani Fazeli, VP Product at Shopify, said that as personal agents become part of everyday life, merchants gain a new frontier for customer service. He said the protocol helps establish how agents and merchants can work together, from product questions to purchases, returns, and exchanges, with the aim of turning buyer intent into delightful customer outcomes.

Kevin Miller, Head of Payments at Stripe, said a customer relationship does not start or end at checkout, and that a customer who sends an agent expects the same service they would get themselves. “We’re contributing to the Personal Agent Protocol to give businesses a standard way to recognize their customers’ agents, efficiently interact with them, and shape their customer relationships,” he said.

Roadmap and Future Extensions

Sierra said it wants to develop the protocol with the companies and personal-agent builders using it, that it welcomes all partners, and that Instinct will also be joining the effort. Alongside the v0.1 specification planned for later in October 2026, the company said it will host design workshops with interested parties and publish a reference implementation to help developers get started.

The announcement also names possible future directions for the standard. More detailed permissions could let customers and companies set limits on specific actions. Push notifications could let a company tell a personal agent the moment a flight is delayed or an order ships. Payments extensions could let a personal agent complete a purchase without sharing credit card information.