Walmart's AI agent guidelines, published October 21, 2026, say an AI agent (software that shops for a person) buys only with the customer's approval or within their spending limit, never sees card data, and gets blocked if it breaks the rules. A small business can write the same kind of policy on one page: which agents are welcome, what they may do, and what you require from them.
The template below is practical guidance, not legal advice. Have a lawyer read anything that becomes part of your terms of use.
Key facts
- What: Walmart announced Agent Profiles, the Walmart Agent Gateway and terms for AI agents (Walmart, 2026-10-21).
- Control: customers approve each agent purchase by default, or set a spending limit. Walmart's examples are $50, $100 or $200.
- Payments: agents never receive payment-card details and can't add or change a payment method.
- Enforcement: "Agents that do not follow these terms will be blocked from Walmart's site."
- Canada: the release covers Walmart.com and Sam's Club and does not mention Canada or walmart.ca.
What are Walmart's AI agent guidelines?
Walmart's guidelines are seven terms that any AI agent must follow when it shops on behalf of a Walmart or Sam's Club customer, plus two tools that make them work: Agent Profiles and the Agent Gateway. An agent here means AI software that browses, compares and buys on a person's behalf.
Agent Profiles give each authorized agent its own profile inside the customer's account, so the agent's orders show up apart from the person's own. Walmart says they launch "in the next month." The customer can require approval for every purchase or allow buying up to a limit, turn permissions off, and delete the profile at any time.
The Agent Gateway is a direct lane for agents, built on MCP (Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI tools to plug into other software). Walmart notes that agents today shop "through a web browser, following steps designed for people," and says the Gateway will be "a faster, more reliable way to shop." It starts as a beta for companies and developers. ActuIA's report describes that beta as invitation-only.
The terms, from Walmart's release:
- Customers are in control, and Walmart's returns process applies, "including if an agent doesn't act as intended."
- Customers approve agent purchases by default. Walmart may ask for extra approval even inside a spending limit.
- "Agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends."
- Agents don't receive card details and can't add or change payment methods.
- Agents see only the information the task needs and the customer allows.
- The agent's own privacy policy covers what it receives. Walmart's Privacy Notice covers what the agent hands to Walmart.
- Agents that break these terms get blocked.
Walmart also commits to one price for everyone: "the prices that an AI agent sees are the same prices that a human would see on Walmart.com."
What applies in Canada today: nothing in the release, as far as it says. It names Walmart.com and Sam's Club only. If you sell in Canada, read it as a model for your own policy, not a program you can join.
Why would a business need an AI agent policy?
Agents are already on your site, and robots.txt can't tell them what they may do once they arrive. robots.txt is a crawl request, not a lock. The standard behind it, RFC 9309, written by Martijn Koster with Google's Gary Illyes, Henner Zeller and Lizzi Sassman, says it plainly: "These rules are not a form of access authorization."
Agents acting for a live person may skip robots.txt entirely. OpenAI's crawler documentation says of ChatGPT-User, the agent that visits pages when someone asks ChatGPT a question: "Because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply."
Shoppers are also ready to hand the errand over. In a PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 2,191 US consumers, 40.2% said they would send an AI shopping agent to a large marketplace, and 16.1% to a brand's own website, even when price, shipping and returns matched (PYMNTS, 2026-10-23). A clear policy is one way to tell agents your site is open for business, on your terms.
We cover the wider shift in what AI shopping agents mean for your website, and how analytics should treat these visitors in agent traffic as a new class of user.
What should an AI agent policy include?
A small-business agent policy needs four parts: which agents you allow, what they may do, what you require from them, and what happens when they break the rules. Walmart's terms map onto each one.
| Walmart's rule | Small-business equivalent |
|---|---|
| Customer approves purchases by default | Agents may request a booking or quote; a person confirms before it is final |
| Spending limits ($50, $100, $200 examples) | Agents may book only standard services; anything over your stated price needs a call or email |
| No card data to agents; no payment changes | Payment happens on your checkout or invoice, never through an agent |
| Actions stay within shopper intent | Agents may not sign up for newsletters, accept terms or change an existing booking on a person's behalf |
| Only the data the task needs | Agents may read public pages; no scraping of account areas or staff directories |
| Returns apply even when the agent errs | Your normal refund and cancellation policy applies to agent-made orders |
| Same price for agents and humans | Prices on your site apply to everyone; no agent-only discounts |
| Non-compliant agents are blocked | Agents that ignore the policy may be rate-limited or blocked |
| Agent Gateway (MCP, beta for companies and developers) | A booking or quote form agents can complete, or a future MCP tool |
Here is a one-page template you can adapt. Swap the bracketed parts for your own.
AI agent policy for [Business name]
Last updated: [date]Who this is for: software agents acting for a person, and the people who send them.
Welcome: search and answer crawlers that identify themselves and follow our robots.txt.
Not welcome: agents that hide their identity or ignore the rules below.
- Agents may:
- Read our public pages, prices and opening hours.
- Quote our published prices with a link to the page.
- Request a booking or quote through [form URL]. A person on our team confirms it.
- Agents may not:
- Pay, enter card details or change payment details on anyone's behalf.
- Create accounts, accept terms or change existing bookings without the person's approval.
- Access account areas, staff information or anything behind a login.
- We require:
- An honest user agent or signed identity, so we know who operates you.
- A real person's approval before any booking or order becomes final.
Prices on this site apply equally to people and agents.
Our usual refund and cancellation policy applies to agent-made orders.
Agents that break this policy may be rate-limited or blocked.
Questions: [email]
How to tell AI agents what they can do on your website
Use three layers: robots.txt for crawlers, a firewall or bot-control setting for enforcement, and a public policy page for everything robots.txt can't express. Each layer covers a gap the others leave.
| Layer | What it controls | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| robots.txt | Which crawlers may fetch which paths | A request, not access control; user-initiated agents may skip it |
| Bot controls (for example Cloudflare) | Allow or block named bots | Only covers bots it can identify |
| Policy page and terms of use | What agents may do: read, quote, book, buy | Relies on agent operators reading and honouring it |
robots.txt. Name crawlers by user agent. OpenAI documents three that matter here: OAI-SearchBot, which surfaces sites in ChatGPT search; GPTBot, which crawls content that may train its models; and ChatGPT-User, which may visit a page when a person asks ChatGPT a question (OpenAI). Blocking GPTBot opts you out of training. Blocking OAI-SearchBot can keep you out of ChatGPT search answers, so most businesses that want customers should leave it allowed. Our robots.txt guide walks through the file line by line.
Bot controls. Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control is "Available on all plans" and lets you "Set allow or block rules for individual crawlers." It also tracks which crawlers follow your robots.txt. Cloudflare now groups signed agents under its Verified bots, and its Verified bots page gives the caution worth keeping in mind for shopping agents: "you may trust the intermediary operator, but not necessarily every end user driving it."
Where to publish the policy. Walmart's release links the Agent Gateway beta to its own page at walmart.com/agents. Copy the pattern:
- A plain page at
/agentsor/ai-policywith the template above. - A short clause in your terms of use that points to it.
- A comment line at the top of robots.txt with the policy URL.
- A link in your site footer, so people and agents can both find it.
If you want agents to book or buy without guessing at your forms, the next step is a structured lane, the small-business version of Walmart's Gateway. See WebMCP and our explainer on the Model Context Protocol. For how Google is approaching agent checkout, read our piece on Google Universal Cart.
Should small businesses block AI shopping agents?
Most small businesses should not block AI shopping agents outright. Block training crawlers if you object to model training, allow search crawlers, and let agents read and request while a person confirms anything that costs money.
A blanket block has a cost. If 40.2% of surveyed shoppers would point an agent at a large marketplace over a brand's own site, a site that turns agents away hands those errands to whoever lets them in.
Blocking makes sense in narrow cases:
- Account areas and checkout. Keep agents out of anything behind a login unless you have a way to confirm the person.
- Limited inventory or bookings. If an agent could book every slot on your calendar, require human confirmation or rate-limit.
- Agents that hide who they are. Walmart blocks agents that break its terms. You can block agents that won't identify themselves.
Honest limits. A policy page binds only agents whose operators choose to read it. Bot controls catch only bots they can identify. Neither replaces your normal fraud checks on payments, and none of this is legal advice.
If you are not sure what agents see on your site today, our free site check looks at whether Google and AI tools can read your pages, and how often six AI tools mention you.