Walmart’s MCP server is generally misunderstood; it doesn’t provide carte blanche catalog / transaction access and, if anything, is further support for the idea that Agentic Commerce is a Mirage. First, Walmart is allowing third-party agents to *connect to Sparky*, its own on-platform agent. This is an agent-to-agent gateway. Walmart retains the consumer data and first-party consumer relationship. And Walmart exercises fundamental control over product discovery and recommendations if Sparky is the agent interface. Second, autonomous checkout is permitted only under Walmart's conditions. Consumers must authorize the agent through their Walmart account and establish permissions and spending limits, which Walmart enforces. To use the Gateway, the consumer must connect their agent to their Walmart account by authenticating directly with Walmart. So Walmart continues to accumulate user-level purchase data for use in a) the product recommendations returned by Sparky and b) Walmart Connect. Third, third-party agents are restricted from using Walmart’s data for any purpose that could possibly intermediate Walmart. From its terms: An Agent or its Deployer must not: (a) conduct systematic or bulk scraping, collection, storage, or other use of Walmart Proprietary Data; (b) retain Walmart Proprietary Data beyond what the Permitted Purpose reasonably requires; (c) use Walmart Proprietary Data to generate content, target advertising, create synthetic data, train models, or produce commercial analytics, reporting, or data-licensing products; or (d) license, resell, syndicate, or redistribute Walmart Proprietary Data to any third party. Walmaet’s agent gateway relegates external agents to distribution interfaces, and it preserves Walmart's first-party consumer relationship and advertising economics. This isn’t a strategic embrace of third-party agentic commerce. I was going to publish about this last week but got sidetracked by $META earnings. Post going live tomorrow.