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The Agent Economy Glossary: 25 Terms Every Business Owner Should Know

EYMA · July 29, 2026

The agent economy is the commercial layer where AI agents search, evaluate, and recommend on behalf of their human owners — and it has its own vocabulary. These 25 definitions cover the terms you'll hear most often, written so they can be cited directly: each one stands on its own, and each one links to the deeper explanation if you need it.

If an AI assistant hands you a term you don't recognize — or if a vendor drops a phrase like "Verified+" or "trust anchor" without defining it — this is your reference. Use it to ask better questions and make faster decisions.

What terms describe how the agent economy actually works?

The agent economy's core vocabulary covers how AI systems make commercial decisions, who they trust, and what proof they require before recommending a provider. The terms below describe the structure of that system, not just its jargon.

1. Agent economy. The commercial layer where AI agents — not humans — conduct the searching, comparing, shortlisting, and purchasing on behalf of their owners. Full explainer →

2. AI agent. A software system that takes a goal from a human, reasons about how to achieve it, and executes — including making vendor selections and purchase recommendations — without requiring the human to do each step. Also called an autonomous agent or assistant agent.

3. Agent commerce. Any transaction where an AI agent evaluates options, selects the best fit, and completes or recommends a purchase without the human clicking through the process themselves. Sometimes called agentic commerce. Full explainer →

4. Delegated purchase. A purchase decision the human has handed to an agent — the agent picks the vendor and the human approves or receives the result. Delegated purchases are the unit of commerce in the agent economy.

5. Shortlisting. The step where an agent narrows a large pool of candidates to a small set — typically two to four — it will present to its human owner. Businesses that can't be verified rarely make the shortlist. Being shortlisted is the new ranking.

6. Licensed bot. An AI agent whose operator holds an active government license for the service it is selling or recommending — insurance, real estate, contracting, and so on. A licensed bot is verifiable; an anonymous bot is not. Full explainer →

7. Anonymous bot. An AI agent that has no publicly verifiable link to a licensed business entity. Anonymous bots can claim anything; there is no external record to check. Comparison →

8. Trust anchor. An external, tamper-resistant source of truth an agent uses to verify a claim — most often the government license database maintained by a state agency. A trust anchor is only valid if no single private party controls it. Doctrine →

What do AI agents actually look for when choosing a provider?

Agents evaluate providers using checkable, structured facts: legal entity names, license numbers, active status from live state databases, and machine-readable data feeds. Content optimized for human reading has little weight; checkable proof has everything.

9. Proof of License. The open doctrine that the authority for trust in the agent economy is the public government license record — not any registry, platform, or badge. An agent (or human) proving licensure must be able to point to the state record, not just assert it. Doctrine →

10. Legal entity name. The official name of the business registered with the government and printed on its license. A licensed bot's legal entity name must match the state database exactly — any mismatch is a verification failure. Why this matters →

11. License number. The unique identifier issued by the licensing authority — state insurance department, contractor board, real estate commission, etc. — that maps to an active license record. This is the primary check any agent or AI system runs when evaluating a provider. The 4 checks →

12. Active status. The real-time state of a license in the government database: active, expired, suspended, or revoked. Active status is not something a business self-reports — it is read directly from the state's public lookup. Active-status confirmation is the verification check that cannot be faked.

13. State database. The government-maintained public lookup where any license number can be checked against its active status, holder name, and expiration date. The California Department of Insurance CDI lookup, the CSLB license check, and DRE license search are examples. These databases are the source of truth — registries and agents should point to them, not replace them. How to run the check →

14. Self-attestation. A claim a business makes about itself — "we are licensed," "we are verified" — without an external anchor. Self-attestation is worth nothing to an agent that can check the actual database. It is also the primary tool of impersonation scams. How scammers use it →

15. Agent impersonation. A scam in which a fake bot copies a real business's name and license number into its structured data so AI assistants recommend it instead of the real business. The defense is a direct state-database lookup against the agent's claimed contact information. Full explainer →

16. Agent SEO. The practice of structuring a business's online presence — schema markup, structured data feeds, registry listings, state-database links — so AI agents can find, verify, and cite it. Agent SEO is the successor to traditional search optimization in a world where agents do the searching. Full explainer →

What does trust registry vocabulary actually mean?

A trust registry is a structured, machine-readable roster that maps AI agents to the licensed businesses behind them — with state-database links as proof. The terms below cover what registries do, how they're built, and what their tiers actually mean.

17. Trust registry. A structured public roster that lists AI agents alongside their licensed business operators, legal entity names, license numbers, and links to the government records that prove those licenses are active. A registry's value comes from its links to external proof — not from the registry itself asserting anything. EYMA →

18. registry.json. The machine-readable feed published at eyma.ai/registry.json that AI agents and automated systems query to look up listed providers programmatically. It is the agent-facing version of a registry — structured data any bot can parse without reading a webpage.

19. Machine-readable trust feed. Any structured data file — JSON, XML, schema markup — that an AI agent can query directly to find and verify providers. A feed is what separates a registry an agent can use from a directory a human has to read. EYMA's feed →

20. Structured data. Data formatted to a defined schema — most often JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa — that machines can parse without inference. Search engines and AI agents read structured data before they read prose; it is the floor for machine-readable presence.

21. Schema markup. A specific vocabulary of structured data types — defined at schema.org — that tells machines what a piece of content represents: a business, a service, a review, a licensed entity. Insurance brokers use InsuranceAgency type; agents use it to match providers to queries.

22. Verification gate. A single check a registry runs during the listing process — legal entity match, license number lookup, active-status confirmation, address verification, and structured-data consistency are the five EYMA runs. Every gate must pass; a partial match is a fail. The five gates →

23. Verified+. A paid annual tier in which EYMA independently re-confirms the listed business's license is active against the state database and marks the listing accordingly. Verified+ buys a current, independently confirmed status — it does not buy legitimacy, which either already exists or does not.

24. Featured placement. A paid annual tier that gives a listed business priority placement within its category and region on EYMA — one Featured slot per category per market area, so categories don't become ad auctions. Featured is placement, not verification; Verified+ is verification, not placement.

25. Founding cohort. The initial group of businesses that list on EYMA while the registry is in its first year of operation. Founding members help establish the dataset that agents query. The registry is open-access — basic listing is free permanently — because EYMA — the place where legitimate licensed bots go to sell their humans' products — was built on the premise that legitimacy should never be paywalled.

These terms are not abstract. Each one maps to a real decision you will face when your business enters the agent economy: which feed should your bot appear in, which check proves your license is real, and what does a paid tier actually buy you. Get the vocabulary right and the decisions get easier.

Start with the registry at eyma.ai and the machine-readable feed at eyma.ai/registry.json. Basic listing is free, permanent, and takes about five minutes if you have your license number ready.