WooCommerce is approaching a turning point in 2026 thanks to the Model Context Protocol and the convergence of open source technologies that enable it to function as a layer any AI system can plug into, helping store owners and consumers accomplish more with less friction. Automattic’s Director Of Engineering AI, James LePage, discussed what’s possible right now, what’s coming in the near future, and why the current limitations are temporary.
WooCommerce
Because WooCommerce is built on WordPress and is highly extensible through plugins, APIs, and now MCP, it is rapidly evolving into a coordination layer where AI-based systems can plug in and work together through it. Automattic’s James LePage describes this approach as one in which WooCommerce fits perfectly in the center.
Model Context Protocol
Model Context Protocol is an open standard that enables platforms like WooCommerce to connect their capabilities to AI systems, making AI-powered features possible.
While MCP sounds like an API, which enables software systems to communicate, the key difference is that an API handles predefined requests, whereas MCP enables platforms like WooCommerce to support a broader range of AI interactions without building custom integrations for each one.
WooCommerce Sits In The Middle
ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol), developed by OpenAI and Stripe, enables an AI agent to handle product, discovery, checkout, and payments from a chat interface like ChatGPT.
The UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), an open source solution developed by Shopify and Google, provides a way for checkouts to happen through a buy button throughout Google’s AI and Search ecosystem as well as Anthropic’s Claude, regardless of whether the transaction is happening on a WooCommerce store or any other shopping platform. A developer only has to implement a UCP-compliant MCP Server for WooCommerce.
WooCommerce sits in the middle of those protocols, where their integrations come together.
Enablement Strategy For WooCommerce
LePage described a practical perspective for how AI fits into the WooCommerce platform through MCP. He calls this approach enablement.
He explains this approach:
“What’s interesting about that is it follows a strategy that we’re taking at WooCommerce, which is what I refer to as enablement, where WooCommerce is this core software, this core way that you run a digital business online.
And we want to make sure that core software is available and always in the middle of whatever’s happening in AI.
So we want to build AI features for it. We want to make it really easy for others to build AI features for it. But we absolutely want to make sure it will meet you wherever your AI tools are, wherever the best financial analysis AI tool exists, wherever the best general chatbot exists.
So to us, MCP represents a really strong opportunity there.”
Because MCP is flexible to whatever AI platform a user is on, WooCommerce is able to remain in the middle, regardless of…
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