The original title is "Agent-Ready Commerce, Part 6: Checkout Is a State Machine, Not a Form"

Short summary

This technical deep-dive argues that agent-ready commerce platforms must model checkout as a controlled state machine rather than a simple form endpoint. Each step—cart mutation, checkout preparation, payment authority, order commitment—increases operational risk and requires explicit state tracking, audit records, and permission boundaries. The post frames checkout within a larger architecture: Facts → Eligibility → Authority → State transition → Evidence → Audit.

• •Checkout should be modeled as a state machine with explicit state transitions, not a loose collection of request handlers
• •Each mutation step has different preconditions and increasing operational risk—cart mutation requires price/inventory; checkout preparation needs fresh data and snapshots; payment authority needs actor validation
• •Platform must track state, facts evaluated, actor authority, transitions, evidence, and audit records to support agent delegation and recovery from failures

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