Not dark patterns. Operational logic.

Physical stock rarely equals sellable stock. Items sit in abandoned carts. Or are held as safety buffers. If you have 42 items and 39 are reserved, telling the user "42 available" is the lie. It causes overselling.

The protocol allows the developer to define the sellable reality.

Crucially, we anticipated abuse. See Section 9: Cross-Verification.

If an agent detects systematic manipulation (fake urgency that contradicts checkout data), the merchant suffers a Trust Score penalty. The protocol is designed to penalize dark patterns, not enable them.

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hrimfaxi 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

Who maintains this trust score? How is it communicated to other agents?

	▲	tsazan 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There is no central authority. The Trust Score is a conceptual framework, not a shared database. Each AI platform (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) builds its own model. They retain full discretion. Agents do not talk to each other. They talk to users. If a score is low, the agent warns the user. It adds caveats or drops the recommendation. It does not broadcast to other bots.