360 check, 9 Nov 2026
Costco on the pay layer: the 360 agent-readiness check
In short
Costco scores 26 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, an F, read 14 Nov 2026. The six payment checks did not apply to costco.com on this read, which is how Ora treats a site it does not read as a shop. An open door onto 414 characters and a GraphQL endpoint behind a key.
On 14 Nov 2026 the public site at costco.com scored 26 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, an F, in Ora's E-commerce category. Costco is the membership warehouse club, selling online to members in a dozen countries, so this check reads the Payments layer first: the six checks that look for x402, MPP, UCP, ACP and AP2 on the domain, the same protocols this site's matrix tracks row by row. The other layers follow, with every check Ora ran and what it saw.
The score
| Layer | Points | Share | What the layer asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 3 of 10 | 30% | Can agents find and recommend it |
| Access | 10.67 of 38 | 28% | Can agents read it |
| Usability | 14 of 65 | 22% | Can agents use it |
| Payments | 0 of 0 | none apply | Can agents pay |
| Total | 26 of 100 | 26% | Grade F |
The pay layer
Ora did not run the six payment checks against costco.com on this read: it marks them not applicable on a site it does not read as a shop, so the layer has no maximum and costs nothing. A retailer that sells online can still publish any of the five protocols; the matrix says which processors and platforms carry each one. Each protocol links to its matrix row, where the processors and platforms that carry it are dated and sourced.
| Payment check | Result | Points | Matrix row | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x402 | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | x402 in the matrix | No x402 payment protocol support detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| MPP | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | MPP in the matrix | No MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) support detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| UCP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | UCP in the matrix | no UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| ACP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | ACP in the matrix | no ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
The other layers, check by check
Every check Ora ran on costco.com, grouped by layer, with the result, the points and what Ora recorded where its wording passes this site's gate.
Discovery: 3 of 10
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARD discovery | Fail | 0 of 1 | No /.well-known/ard.json, no same-site rel="ard" link, and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json |
| Developer resource discoverability | Fail | 0 of 4 | In a search for your API docs, none of the 10 results is your official docs |
| Brand name discoverability | Partial | 1 of 3 | costco.com ranks #7 for "costco" (searched your brand name alone: no main product term from your homepage qualified) |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy | Pass | 1 of 1 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 3 of 3 checks (3 crawlers on 1 page). AI training crawlers: allowed in 2 of 2 checks (2 crawlers on 1 page), not scored. |
| Agent platform configs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Could not locate a public repo containing agent configs or rules. If our probes missed it, AI coding agents likely will too - link the repo from your homepage or docs so it's discoverable. |
| Agent Plugins manifest | Fail | 0 of 1 | No Agent Plugins manifest (plugin.json) found in discovered repos |
| ChatGPT app listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Homepage not hidden from search | Pass | 1 of 1 | No noindex on the homepage: no robots, googlebot or bingbot meta tag and no X-Robots-Tag header hides it from search. |
Access: 10.67 of 38
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sitemap exists | Pass | 1 of 1 | Valid sitemap found at https://www.costco.com/sitemap_lw_index.xml with multiple sitemaps entries |
| Content without JavaScript | Partial | 1.67 of 5 | Homepage: Only 299 chars of text content - agents see limited content. No inner pages checked: the 5 sampled pages were skipped (forms, login pages, bot challenges, error pages |
| Not blocked by bot detection | Pass | 2 of 2 | Site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). |
| Agent discovery file | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent discovery file found |
| A2A / agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Listed on skills.sh | Fail | 0 of 1 | No official skills self-published on skills.sh (100 community skills with potential relation to this domain found, but only self-published official skills count) |
| pricing.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No pricing.md found - agents need machine-readable pricing to compare products and make purchase recommendations |
| NLWeb Schema Feeds | Fail | 0 of 1 | No schemamap: directive in robots.txt |
| MCP well-known discovery | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server URL discovered |
| HTTP Link headers (RFC 8288) | Fail | 0 of 1 | No HTTP Link response headers (RFC 8288) found |
| Markdown URL fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://costco.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Modular llms.txt per product area | Fail | 0 of 1 | No section-level llms.txt found. Tried /docs/llms.txt, /api/llms.txt, /developers/llms.txt, /guides/llms.txt, /reference/llms.txt, /myaccount/llms.txt, /checkoutcartview/llms.txt, /warehouse-locations/llms.txt |
| robots.txt agent-user policy | Pass | 1 of 1 | No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page: https://costco.com/. Declared policy only |
| llms.txt exists | Fail | 0 of 1 | No llms.txt found at /llms.txt or /.well-known/llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting | Fail | 0 of 2 | No llms.txt found to evaluate quality |
| JSON-LD structured data | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD structured data found on homepage |
| Pricing info accessible | Fail | 0 of 3 | No pricing page or pricing data found |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage | Fail | 0 of 4 | No public API or documentation page linked from homepage |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use | Fail | 0 of 1 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |
| Skills.sh skill quality | Fail | 0 of 2 | No official skills on skills.sh to evaluate |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Fail | 0 of 1 | No JSON-LD found - no entity linking possible |
| Metadata completeness | Partial | 0.5 of 1 | 2/4 metadata signals present - missing: og:image, og:type |
| Organization schema completeness | Fail | 0 of 1 | No JSON-LD found - Organization schema missing |
| Trust anchor pages | Partial | 0.5 of 1 | About, Contact pages verified - missing: Privacy |
| Markdown alternate link | Fail | 0 of 1 | No sampled page advertises a markdown alternate. Add <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="..."> (or the equivalent Link response header) pointing at a markdown twin of the page. |
| Redirect hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Page token budget | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 6 measured pages fit an agent context budget (largest ~1K tokens) |
| Content behind auth | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 5 sampled pages are publicly readable (5 with substantive content) |
| OpenAPI spec published | Fail | 0 of 8 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) |
| Markdown agent docs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Missing markdown content negotiation. Homepage returned text/html when probed with Accept: text/markdown (expected text/markdown), and none of the well-known root paths (/llms.md, /auth.md, /agents.md, /developers.md |
| Markdown content negotiation (acceptmarkdown.com) | Fail | 0 of 1 | Homepage https://costco.com does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html; charset=utf-8; Vary header missing Accept (got "accept-encoding") |
| Bot-UA markdown serving | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) receives markdown when requesting HTML. Optional: detect AI-bot UAs server-side and serve them a markdown representation directly. |
| Agent crawler reachability | Pass | 1 of 1 | Reachable to every agent we tested - ChatGPT-User: reachable, OAI-SearchBot: reachable, Claude-User: reachable, PerplexityBot: reachable |
Usability: 14 of 65
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public API with reachable endpoints | Pass | 8 of 8 | GraphQL endpoint at https://ecom-api.costco.com/ebusiness/product/v1/products/graphql\ is reachable; introspection requires authentication (API key / OAuth), which is expected for agent access. |
| OAuth 2.0 support | Pass | 5 of 5 | OpenID Connect discovery endpoint found at https://login.costco.com |
| Scoped permissions | Fail | 0 of 5 | No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found |
| Agent onboarding friction | Fail | 0 of 2 | High onboarding friction - no free tier, self-serve keys, or sandbox detected |
| Web Bot Auth directory | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory found |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| auth.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| auth.md structure | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| Agent auth discovery metadata | Fail | 0 of 3 | Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: costco.com, api.costco.com. |
| Agent auth WWW-Authenticate hint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=... found. Probed [https://costco.com/api, https://costco.com/api/v1, https://costco.com/v1, https://costco.com/v2, https://costco.com/agent/identity, https://costco.com/agent/auth |
| agent_auth endpoints reachable | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent_auth endpoint URIs found in AS metadata or /auth.md prose; nothing to probe |
| MCP server / manifest | Fail | 0 of 10 | No MCP server or manifest found |
| WebMCP support | Fail | 0 of 8 | No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found (scanned 66 of 66 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations) |
| Rate limit response headers | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no header convention documented on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| Idempotency-Key support | Fail | 0 of 3 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no idempotency documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| JSON error responses | Fail | 0 of 3 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NLWeb-conformant /ask endpoint found via GET or POST |
| NLWeb streaming support | Fail | 0 of 1 | NLWeb /ask does not support SSE streaming via GET or POST |
| MCP server-card.json | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server card found (checked /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json, the site's ai-catalog.json, servers[].card in mcp.json, and <server>/server-card) |
| Product + docs MCP coverage | Fail | 0 of 2 | This bonus needs two MCP servers: one for your product so agents can take actions, and a separate one for your documentation so agents can answer questions from your docs. |
| Sandbox / test environment | Fail | 0 of 2 | No sandbox or test environment found |
| GraphQL typed error model | Fail | 0 of 3 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no typed graphql error model documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL versioning / deprecation policy | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql versioning / deprecation policy documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL pagination pattern | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql pagination pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL async-job pattern | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql async-job pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| Agent-friendly 404s | Partial | 1 of 2 | The nonexistent path https://costco.com/__ora-404-probe-oleot6jx correctly returns HTTP 404. Partial credit: no Markdown error body was detected. |
| Accessible document structure | Pass | 3 of 3 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Native interactive controls | Pass | 3 of 3 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Accessible names on controls | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Form control labeling | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Accessibility-tree injection safety (bonus) | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| API schema complexity analysis | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL: introspection auth-gated and no schema evidence in docs |
| Function calling compatibility | Fail | 0 of 2 | No API spec found - function calling requires discoverable endpoints |
The fixes worth most points
Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for Costco.
- Developer resource discoverability
- Fail, 0 of 4, about 8.9 points to gain. Ora saw:
In a search for your API docs, none of the 10 results is your official docs
. - OpenAPI spec published
- Fail, 0 of 8, about 7 points to gain. Ora saw:
No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found
. - MCP server / manifest
- Fail, 0 of 10, about 6.8 points to gain. Ora saw:
No MCP server or manifest found
. - WebMCP support
- Fail, 0 of 8, about 5.5 points to gain. Ora saw:
No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found (scanned 66 of 66 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations)
. - Brand name discoverability
- Partial, 1 of 3, about 4.4 points to gain. Ora saw:
costco.com ranks #7 for "costco" (searched your brand name alone: no main product term from your homepage qualified)
.
Our read
Costco opens the door and gives an agent 414 characters to read. All four agent user agents reach costco.com, robots.txt allows the search and training crawlers and the sitemap index is valid, but the home page renders almost nothing without JavaScript, carries no JSON-LD and the domain has no llms.txt. The six payment checks did not apply on this read, and Ora's UCP probe found no signal on the domain, so the pay layer reads 0 of 0. The act layer is what a warehouse club's public site would be expected to have, which is a GraphQL endpoint at ecom-api.costco.com with introspection gated, and nothing else: neither a developer portal nor an OpenAPI specification, neither an MCP server nor OAuth beyond a mention on the home page. Ora's search for Costco developer resources found nothing, which costs 5.6 points on its own. A members-only business has reasons to keep its API private; the home page text is the fix that costs nothing.
Test your own checkout
The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at ora.ai and read the same layers for your own site, with the six payment checks mapped to this matrix on the Ora Payments page. The command below runs the same audit from a terminal and exits with 1 under the score you set, so it can gate a deploy. Why Ora, and its limits.
npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70All 360 checks, one company a day. Corrections to the corrections page.
Sources
- ora.ai/api/score/costco.com, Ora's scan (vendor), read 14 Nov 2026
- Ora's scoring rules, version 3 (vendor), read 14 Nov 2026
- Ora check catalog (GET /api/checks), read 14 Nov 2026
- costco.com, the company's site, read 14 Nov 2026
Last reviewed