A category, defined
The published price stays. Alongside it, terms can now be formed.
For two centuries commerce has run on printed terms: one price, one set of conditions, take it or leave it. Negotiation never disappeared. It retreated to where a conversation could pay for itself. AI agents have just made the conversation affordable for every purchase.
- $1,299
Published price
stands for everyone
- $1,150
Offer
delivery included, private
- $1,195
Counter
delivery included, old unit collected
- $1,195
Agreed
honoured at checkout
The seller's floor was never disclosed. The shopper's ceiling was never disclosed. The price list did not change for anyone else.
Definition
“Negotiated Commerce is the formation of the terms of a transaction between two agents, in private, under rules each side controls, executed in the moment and honoured where the transaction settles.”
Every word carries weight. Six of them carry the whole idea.
- 01Terms
- Not only a price. Delivery, inclusions, timing, service: the things that make a deal worth more to both sides than a discount can.
- 02Two agents
- Software now represents both the buyer and the seller. Each acts for its principal, and neither is trusted with the other's limits.
- 03In private
- Agreed terms are known to the two parties and no one else. Publication is what makes flexible terms dangerous.
- 04Rules each side controls
- The seller's floor and the buyer's ceiling are held by their own systems. They are never disclosed, hinted at, or argued past.
- 05In the moment
- Every proposal gets a definitive answer at once: accepted, countered, or declined. Term formation collapses from days to milliseconds.
- 06Honoured where it settles
- An agreement the checkout does not recognise is a claim, not an agreement. The deal is redeemed on the rails where the sale is made.
What it is not
It is not a new way to set a price. It is a new way to form terms.
In every neighbouring mechanism, one party sets and the other takes. In Negotiated Commerce both parties shape the outcome, and neither can see the other's limits. That second will is the whole difference.
- Dynamic pricingThe seller moves the number, alone, for everyone or for segments. One will, one price.
- PersonalisationThe seller predicts what a particular buyer might tolerate, from data the buyer rarely knew they gave.
- DiscountingThe seller lowers the published terms, in public, for all comers at once, and shows every competitor the new number.
- AuctionMany buyers compete against each other under a mechanism the seller controls.
- Negotiated CommerceTwo authorised economic actors forming mutually acceptable terms, each within limits they alone control, in private, with a committed outcome.
How it works
Three moves, inside one conversation.
- Step 1
Who negotiates
The shopper's assistant consults the Registry before it says a word: does this seller take offers, and what does it publish about matching a price? The answer is yes or not yet, checked by a person, never overstated.
Carried by The Bidit Registry
- Step 2
Terms are formed
The assistant makes a private offer on the shopper's behalf, at the number the shopper gives, with the terms that matter to them. The seller's rules reply at once: accept, counter, or decline. Nobody else sees it.
Carried by Bidit, the engine
- Step 3
The deal is honoured
The agreed terms settle where the seller normally settles, with the seller as seller of record and the negotiation layer never holding funds. The ready customer still pays the ticket, untouched.
Carried by The Negotiation Extension
The ready customer pays the ticket, untouched. The customer at the edge, who wants it and values it honestly, makes an offer, and a sale that never used to exist, exists. Every offer, won or lost, teaches the seller what customers truly value.
Principles
Six rules a conforming system enforces in code.
A negotiation layer that abandons these becomes surveillance, or becomes discounting. The category is defined by being neither.
- 1Private
Agreed terms are never published, never indexed, never fed to comparison.
- 2Floor-protected
Each side's limits are held by its own engine and never exposed in any response, error or hint.
- 3Bounded
Attempts are limited and enforced by the engine, never trusted to the other side's agent. Agreement closes the negotiation.
- 4Instant
Every proposal receives an immediate, definitive answer.
- 5Honoured
Agreement produces a commitment redeemed where the transaction natively settles.
- 6Honest
Negotiability is never overstated at discovery, and agents relay outcomes truthfully.
The three parts
Held apart on purpose.
Bidit named and defined the category. The protocol is open so everyone can trust it. Bidit exists so it actually works.
Negotiated Commerce
A way of trading in which terms are formed between buyer and seller, alongside the published price. Named and defined by Bidit; argued in the manifesto, grounded in the white paper.
The Negotiation Extension
An open extension to the agentic commerce stack. Catalogue protocols say what exists, checkout protocols say how it settles. This one says how terms are formed.
Bidit
The reference implementation and the operator of the first negotiability index. The engine negotiates real products at real retailers today, price and value together.
Where to start depends on who you are.
You shop with an assistant
Add the Bidit Registry to Claude once. Then ask whether a retailer price matches, or whether it will take an offer, before you buy.
Add to ClaudeYou run a store
Your listing in the Registry is what assistants read when a shopper asks about your terms. Confirm it, correct it, and put the badge on your site.
For merchantsYou build agents
Four questions, answered as plain HTTP and as an MCP server, with an OpenAPI description and an open dataset.
For assistants