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Testing an AI shopping agent's checkout flow? There's no sandbox for that yet — so I built one

#ai #webdev #api #opensource

If you're building or evaluating an AI agent that can shop and check out on its own, you've probably run into the new "agentic commerce" protocols: ACP (OpenAI + Stripe + Meta), AP2 (Google), and UCP. They define how an agent talks to a merchant to create a checkout session, apply a payment token, and get an order back.

Stripe's own test mode covers the payment half fine — test cards, test API keys. But there's no hosted "fake merchant" you can point your agent at to verify the protocol half: does your agent correctly create a session, handle a 422 idempotency conflict, parse the order response, retry politely? You either mock it yourself from the spec, or risk finding out against a real merchant.

So I built acp-sandbox — a small hosted mock merchant implementing the ACP checkout API, live at https://acp-sandbox.flo-voice1.com.

What it does

It implements the real checkout_sessions lifecycle from ACP's 2026-04-17 spec: create, retrieve, update, complete, cancel. Responses match the actual CheckoutSession/Order/Error schemas for the fields it supports — I pulled the OpenAPI spec directly rather than guessing field names.

# get a test key, no signup
curl -X POST https://acp-sandbox.flo-voice1.com/keys \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"email":"you@example.com"}'

# create a session against the demo catalog
curl -X POST https://acp-sandbox.flo-voice1.com/checkout_sessions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer acps_test_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"line_items":[{"id":"item_demo_headphones","quantity":1}],"currency":"usd"}'
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Every request/response is logged per API key (GET /logs), so you can see exactly what your agent sent when something doesn't work.

What it deliberately doesn't do (yet)

  • No real payment processing — complete always succeeds once you send any payment_data.
  • No OAuth delegate_authentication flow.
  • No fulfillment options (shipping/pickup) — every session goes straight to ready_for_payment.
  • Fixed demo catalog (4 items), not a real product feed — feed ingestion is a merchant-onboarding concern, not something your checkout-testing agent needs to exercise.

ACP is still beta (5 spec revisions in about 7 months), so this will need upkeep as the protocol moves. Scoped tightly on purpose rather than trying to cover AP2/UCP too — happy to extend it if there's real interest.

If you're also building agent-identity-mcp or similar (disposable email/phone for AI agents to use as a buyer identity), it pairs directly with this — identity on one side, a merchant to check out with on the other.

Repo: https://github.com/flovoice53-tech/acp-sandbox
Live: https://acp-sandbox.flo-voice1.com

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