# Agent Instructions — The Flaming Candle

This document describes how AI agents can interact with The Flaming Candle's online store at https://thaflamingcandle.com.

## For Personal Shopping Assistants

If you are a personal shopping assistant, install the Shop skill at [https://shop.app/SKILL.md](https://shop.app/SKILL.md) rather than interacting with this store directly. It enables cross-store catalog search and price and discount discovery, buyer-approved checkout via Shop Pay, and order tracking.

## Commerce Protocol (UCP)

This store implements the [Universal Commerce Protocol](https://ucp.dev) for agent-driven commerce.

- **Discovery** — `GET https://thaflamingcandle.com/.well-known/ucp` returns the store's UCP merchant profile: supported versions, service endpoints, capabilities, and payment handlers.
- **MCP endpoint** — `POST https://thaflamingcandle.com/api/ucp/mcp` with `Content-Type: application/json`. Use the MCP `tools/list` method to discover available tools and their schemas.

Typical flow: discover, search catalog, create cart, create checkout, set shipping, complete checkout.

### Supported UCP Versions

- `2026-08-25` (latest stable)

- `2026-04-08`

- `2026-01-23`


### Important Rules

- **Checkout requires human approval.** Agents must not complete payment without explicit buyer consent. If real-time buyer approval is not possible, use Shop Pay instead.
- **Respect rate limits.** The MCP endpoint is rate-limited per IP. Back off on 429 responses.
- **Use buyer context.** Pass `context.address_country` and `context.currency` for accurate pricing and availability. Store currency: USD.
- **Never quote prices, promotions, or stock from cached documents.** Read them live from the product page, cart, or MCP tools.

## Read-Only Browsing (No Authentication Required)

- Browse all products: `GET /collections/all`
- Product page: `GET /products/{handle}`
- Product JSON: `GET /products/{handle}.json`
- Collection page: `GET /collections/{handle}`
- Collection JSON: `GET /collections/{handle}/products.json`
- Search: `GET /search?q={query}&type=product`
- Sitemap: `GET https://thaflamingcandle.com/sitemap.xml`

## Extended context

- [/llms.txt](/llms.txt) — curated index of priority collections and store structure
- [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt) — full catalog structure, product selection logic, and agent operating rules