Checkout Readiness Exceptions Index Methodology
For this smoke report, StoreSteady evaluated a frozen checkout-readiness page-smoke bundle and referenced the existing Summer 2026 Breakage checkout aggregate as tentative context. This page documents selection, denominator, exclusion, redaction, source, and version rules.
Corpus And Window
Selection rule: Three redacted page-smoke fixtures cover ready_observed, exception_observed, and blocked_or_not_evaluable before any production-store expansion. No new full crawl or transactional checkout probe is included.
Freeze timestamp: 2026-05-29T18:20:00.000Z
Evaluation window: 2026-05-29T18:20:00.000Z to 2026-05-29T18:20:00.000Z
Fields collected: public PDP availability and add-to-cart state, public checkout-link host and protocol state, blocked or challenged checkout-adjacent state, state contract labels: ready_observed, exception_observed, missing_public_evidence, blocked_or_not_evaluable, not_applicable, Breakage checkout_exception_risk aggregate counts, tier, alpha, accuracy, and calibration candidate mix.
Denominator Rules
Every published rate has its own evaluable N and Wilson 95% confidence interval.
Access friction, detector non-evaluability, deterministic conflicts, tentative findings, and confirmed findings are kept separate.
No blended denominator is used in this report.
Metric Quality Table
| Metric | Tier | N | Count | CI | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| checkout_readiness_state_contract_smoke_pages_classified | Not rate-published | 3 | 3 | not published | Smoke completeness count only. No store-level, corpus-wide, checkout-failure, protocol-adoption, or financial-impact rate is published. |
| checkout_smoke_ready_observed_pages | Not rate-published | 3 | 1 | not published | Smoke count only. Ready observed means enough public state is visible in the fixture; it is not a production-store rate. |
| checkout_smoke_exception_observed_pages | Not rate-published | 3 | 1 | not published | Smoke count only. Exception observed requires deterministic public evidence such as stock hidden behind cart interaction or suspicious checkout-link routing. |
| checkout_smoke_blocked_or_not_evaluable_pages | Limitation | 3 | 1 | not published | Blocked or challenged checkout-adjacent state is separated from exceptions and is not treated as a finding. |
| checkout_exception_risk_tentative_breakage_reference | Tentative | 104 | 26 | 17.7% - 34.1% | Existing Summer 2026 Breakage checkout_exception_risk aggregate. Tentative only because alpha missed the headline gate; not a confirmed checkout-failure or readiness-rate headline. |
Redaction Policy
- No store names, raw domains, raw URLs, raw crawl text, or raw AI responses are published.
- No exact promo codes, private feed/admin evidence, or merchant-identifying product examples are published.
- Public examples fail closed unless Caleb explicitly approves the specific exposure.
Related Public Benchmarks
This report is not a placement dashboard, market forecast, AEO forecast, or financial impact estimate. It measures evidence quality and evaluability under the StoreSteady public research protocol.
Sources
- OpenAI Agentic Checkout Spec - Checkout-flow context for merchant handoff, cart, checkout-session, and order-confirmation surfaces.
- OpenAI Agentic Commerce overview - Agentic-commerce context only. The report does not measure adoption or protocol-native transaction capability.
- StoreSteady Breakage aggregate CSV - Source for the tentative checkout_exception_risk reference row. It is not promoted to a confirmed checkout-failure rate.
- Stripe Agentic Commerce Protocol documentation - Protocol context for cart and checkout-session surfaces; protocol adoption is handled by the separate adoption census.
- StoreSteady published aggregate report JSON - Published aggregate artifact used as the source of calibrated public-report counts.
- OpenAI crawler documentation - Context for AI crawler and robots controls; not used as a ranking or reach claim.
- Google robots.txt guidance - Crawler-access context for robots restrictions and non-circumventing evaluation.
- Google merchant listing structured data - Public product-structured-data context for merchant listing evidence.
- OpenAI product feed specification - Product-data freshness context; not used as a connected-merchant-data audit.
- Shopify product taxonomy - Shopify product-data context for product categorization and storefront facts.
Version History
- 2026-summer.public-v1 (2026-05-29): Initial checkout-readiness state contract smoke with tentative Breakage checkout_exception_risk reference and explicit expansion gate.