UCP Manifest
The UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) manifest is served at /.well-known/ucp so AI crawlers and agents can discover your store and its capabilities.
Where it’s served#
CognitiveCart registers a rewrite rule so that requests to:
https://your-site.com/.well-known/ucp
return the manifest as JSON. Both /.well-known/ucp and /.well-known/ucp/ are valid. No configuration is required—once the plugin is active and permalinks are flushed, the URL is live.
What the manifest exposes#
The manifest is a JSON object that includes:
- abilitiesEndpoint — The base URL for the Abilities API (e.g.
/wp-json/cognitive-cart/v1/abilities). Agents call this to discover what actions the store supports (list products, add to cart, get checkout URL, etc.). - When Stripe is connected: checkoutCreateSessionEndpoint and checkoutCompleteUrlTemplate. These let agents create a Stripe Checkout session and know where the customer will be redirected after payment.
Crawlers that follow the UCP/ACP specs use this URL to find your store and then call the abilities endpoint to list available operations.
How crawlers use it#
AI crawlers and agents typically:
- Request
/.well-known/ucpon your domain (or discover it via a directory or link). - Parse the JSON to get
abilitiesEndpoint. - Call the abilities endpoint to retrieve the list of abilities (list-products, add-to-cart, get-checkout-url, etc.).
- Use the documented REST routes to list products, manage cart, and optionally create checkout sessions.
The Intelligence Dashboard in CognitiveCart shows crawl health (e.g. when a known AI bot last requested the manifest) so you can confirm discovery is working.