# CommonTape

> CommonTape is a transaction layer for AI agents: discover, quote, hold, book, modify, cancel and check the status of US home-services jobs (house cleaning first) on a customer's behalf, against rules each business sets. Free to use. Payment-agnostic: the customer pays the business directly. Pre-launch.

## For agents
- [API docs](https://commontape.com/docs): operations, auth, errors, examples
- Try it with no sign-up: the demo key ct_demo_nQz4WaXqJvMoL8A6FYCaRtpJnsF7UrZh reaches only CommonTape Demo Cleaning, a pretend business in ZIP 10001, never a real one, and nobody is sent anything; demo jobs are deleted after about a day; everyone shares its limits (30 calls a minute, 20 open holds, 200 bookings a day). See https://commontape.com/docs#try-it.
- [OpenAPI spec](https://commontape.com/api/v1/openapi.json)
- [Word list](https://commontape.com/api/v1/taxonomy/house_cleaning): the fixed words for a job (tasks, equipment, products, crew, payment, job conditions) and for the customer's home (kinds of home and kinds of room, each with one fixed meaning). Public, no key.
- Start with search: send the customer's zip, the home once in property (kind of home, how many of each kind of room, size, floor), price inputs such as hours in inputs, and words in must_have, nice_to_have and must_not. The answer reads the job back in plain lines. You get the businesses that can do the job with one exact price and open windows, and the near misses with reasons. Anything not on the word list goes in special_requests and always needs the owner's approval.
- Open times fit the job: each quote says job_hours (how long the job takes on site); a business with capacity.jobs_at_once offers only times exactly that long, built from its working hours, never more jobs at the same time than it can do
- Cleaners and time between jobs: each quote also says job_people (the cleaners the job takes; null while incomplete); a business with capacity.cleaners offers a time only when the job's cleaners fit beside the jobs there; capacity.gap_minutes keeps that much time between jobs; crew.rule {by, from, people} may read bedrooms, bathrooms, living_areas, floors or square_feet
- After booking: book and status carry a receipt (what was booked, from the record, with a plain text confirmation for your customer). modify says what kind of change it was (change.kinds) and answers NEEDS_OWNER_APPROVAL when the owner must say yes; cancel takes an optional reason and says who, when and why (no cancellation fee through CommonTape). A job the business called off is supplier_cancelled: status carries recovery (the job to search again with, and other businesses), and a change of it answers SUPPLIER_CANCELLED.
- What a business takes, per service: discover services[].takes are the limits that apply to each service (a move-out clean may take bigger homes than a standard clean), including min_bedrooms, max_full_bathrooms, occupancy, furnishing and ask_first_above (above that size, or with the size left out, the owner says yes first: approval reason ask_first_limit). A limit the owner is not sure of (takes.unsure) reads as ask first, never a miss. services[].matchable false (scope_not_confirmed) = the owner has not confirmed what the service includes: not searchable or quotable.
- When a business takes jobs: discover when holds only its plain Nos (min_days_ahead 1 = no same-day jobs, 2 = no same-day or next-day; weekends, evening_starts, holidays false). Too-soon times are never offered; a hold or move to one answers INSUFFICIENT_NOTICE (422) with error.earliest; a search where every open time is too soon lists the business as a near miss insufficient_notice.
- MCP endpoint (Streamable HTTP, stateless, bearer key): https://commontape.com/api/mcp
- Merchant records: https://commontape.com/m/{slug} and https://commontape.com/m/{slug}/record.json

## About
- [About](https://commontape.com/about)
- [Security](https://commontape.com/security)
- [Privacy](https://commontape.com/privacy)
- [Terms](https://commontape.com/terms)
- [Contact](https://commontape.com/contact): hello@commontape.com