Services, bookings and businesses that are not shops: restaurants, salons, clinics, hotels, courses and agencies Free & Pro

Most businesses do not have a cart. A customer’s assistant sent to a restaurant, a salon, a clinic, a hotel or an agency wants to ask questions and make an arrangement: is there a table at eight, can I move my appointment, do you do this kind of work, how much. The Personal Agent Protocol covers that case with a conversation channel: the customer’s assistant talks to the business’s own agent, which can hand off to a person. This page explains that channel, says plainly what Agent Adapt offers for it today (the WooCommerce plugin does not offer it), and what a service business can do now. Facts are as of 15 October 2026.

The conversation channel, in brief

A business that offers it lists a Company Agent in its discovery file. The customer’s assistant starts a conversation, sends messages, and reads events; the business’s side answers, marks itself as working or idle, and can hand the conversation to a human, in which case replies arrive marked as from a person. If account access is needed, the business asks for sign-in in the conversation, and the same consent page and scopes apply as for shops. The protocol’s guidance to businesses is that the Company Agent should handle whatever a customer could do by phone. Payments are not part of the draft, so a booking that needs a deposit ends with the customer paying on the business’s own site.

What Agent Adapt offers today

• The WooCommerce plugin does not offer a Company Agent. It offers the API and website channels for shops: catalogue, cart, orders, addresses, checkout link.
• WooCommerce Bookings and other booking plugins have no integration. A bookable product appears to agents as a product; making or changing a booking through an agent is not available. See What Agent Adapt works with.
• A hosted Company Agent for any business website is built and live from Agent Adapt: it answers a customer’s assistant from the business’s own pages, hands the conversation to a person when it should, and needs only the business’s domain to serve its discovery document on one path (a proxy of the hosted copy, not a redirect to it, since the protocol changed on 16 October 2026). For trades and service businesses it also offers services, areas, estimates, quote requests with photos and bookings, each behind a per-site switch. A booking can be moved, a tradesperson can ask to see the job before quoting, the Company Agent knows when the business can come, the business gets a private calendar feed of its bookings, and it is told of new requests by email or a signed webhook. It is in early access by email and not on sale; write to [email protected].

What a service business can do now

1. Put the answers on public pages, in text. Hours, location, prices, what you do and do not do, how to book, cancellation terms, parking, accessibility. Any Company Agent, ours or anyone’s, answers from your content, and assistants that browse your site instead read the same pages.
2. Check what your platform allows for the discovery file: WordPress and self-hosted sites can serve a provider’s copy themselves; Squarespace, Wix, Webflow and Shopify need Cloudflare in front with a Worker on the one path. See the platform pages, starting with Making any website agent-ready.
3. Decide what a handoff looks like for you. A Company Agent that cannot answer passes the conversation to a person; that person is you or your front desk, and the channel is an inbox. Decide who watches it.

Businesses that are partly shops

A salon that sells products, a restaurant with a shop page, a hotel with vouchers: the shop part on WooCommerce gets the full plugin route today, and the service part gets the hosted Company Agent, in early access. One domain can offer both, because the discovery file lists each channel separately. See WooCommerce and personal agents.

Common questions

Can a customer’s assistant book a table or an appointment through Agent Adapt today?

Not through the plugin, which has no bookings. The hosted Company Agent, in early access by email, takes a booking where the business has switched bookings on, and hands the request to a person where it has not.

Would a Company Agent make bookings?

The draft’s conversation channel allows either: answer and hand a booking request to a person, or make the booking. Ours does both, each behind a per-site switch: it answers from the business’s pages, takes quote requests with photos, estimates and bookings where the business turns them on, and hands anything else to a person.

Does this need WooCommerce?

The Company Agent route does not. It needs the business’s domain to serve the hosted service’s discovery document on one path; since 16 October 2026 a redirect to the hosted service no longer counts.

Will an assistant find my restaurant?

Not through the protocol, which has no directory. The customer names you; the assistant then fetches your domain’s discovery file.