Meta Connect 2026: How to Get Your Business Inside Muse

“Sheesh… You get a agent and YOU get a agent..” That was me on September 8.

Sixteen days later, Meta took the stage at Connect and made it official. The agent isn’t just for your customers. It’s coming for your storefront.

Most of the recaps you’ll read tonight are about the glasses. Fair. Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 is $449 and on sale now, and the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio is $349 and ships October 13.

But if you run a business, the glasses are the car commercial. The real announcement is the dealership.

The one announcement business owners should care about

Muse has a shelf now. A directory of connectors, the apps and services your customer’s agent can reach just by asking.

Zuckerberg opened it to outside developers on September 18, in a post with nearly 6 million views:

“You bring the API — Muse brings the agent, the browser, and the context of what the person actually wants. People reach your service just by asking for it.”

@finkd, September 18

Read that like a business owner. Your next customer might never see your website. Their Muse walks in, asks the question, and walks out with the order.

And the line is already out the door. Meta got 1,500+ connector applications in one week, per TechCrunch. Meta’s own Jake Levine put it at over 2,000 submissions in just a few days.

Meanwhile PostFast, which tracks the directory, counted 38 connectors actually live on September 24.

That’s the story. Two thousand businesses knocking. Thirty-eight inside.

What else Meta announced (the business-owner cut)

iSourcesMeta's Connect recap, TechCrunch, Engadget (Charm timing), PostFast's connector tracker (live vs coming soon).

On the business model, Zuckerberg was plain. Muse stays free for a huge number of tokens, “with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions,” per Medianama.

Free to the shopper. A toll on the sale. That’s a mall, not an app.

And the mall is filling up fast. Muse hit #1 on Apple’s US free chart on September 18, ten days after launch.

The three doors into Muse

Here’s what nobody’s laying out plainly. You don’t need to build anything to get in the building. There are three doors, and one of them might already be open.

Door one: Shopify. If you sell on Shopify, check your admin tonight. Per Shopify’s own help page, Meta’s direct checkout switches on automatically for stores that sell to the US, Canada or Mexico, run the Facebook and Instagram sales channel, and have their policies in place.

No fees beyond your normal payment processing. You stay merchant of record. Subscriptions, bundles and local pickup don’t work through it yet.

Door two: Stripe Link. Stripe says Muse can check out instantly at more than 1 million businesses that accept Link. Everywhere else, Link hands Muse a single-use virtual card for that one purchase, and the buyer approves the total in chat.

Door three: build a connector. This is for anybody with an API, a booking system, a catalog or a service people would ask their agent for. You submit at muse.ai/platform, Meta reviews it, and it lands in the directory everybody browses.

There’s a side door too. Any user can have Muse build a custom connector to your public API for just themselves. Meta doesn’t review those, and they don’t get you on the shelf.

How to get a Muse connector approved

Meta’s page lists three steps. Describe what your connector does. Pass a review for “functional, security, and legal requirements,” plus end-to-end testing. Get listed, and maybe picked by editors for featured placement.

That’s the brochure. Builders who went through it filled in the rest.

Banjo Obayomi wrote up the whole submission for WeOutsideDC, a DC events project. The form offered two paths: Raw API (an API URL, optional OpenAPI spec, docs) or Existing MCP (a hosted endpoint plus docs). It also asked for a privacy policy, terms of service, a 512x512 icon, and an auth method: API key or OAuth PKCE.

The smartest move in the write-up was the first one. Write the requests a real person would type (“free outdoor events in DC this weekend”) before writing a line of code. Then build only what those requests need.

If you’re wondering whether you need an engineer… for a hosted MCP server or a clean HTTPS API, somebody technical has to stand it up. Parallel’s guide says remote MCP servers over HTTP work best, and a server running on your laptop can’t be reached. But the agent in your editor can do most of the build. The prompts are at the bottom.

Then you wait. Developers who submitted report a confirmation email promising Meta will “onboard developers in waves over the coming weeks.” PostFast submitted September 19 and was still pending on September 24.

Should you build one now?

Depends which lane you’re in.

Shopify store: you’re probably already in. Your job is making the catalog readable by a robot. Color, size and material go in structured fields, not buried in a paragraph. An agent can’t fall in love with your copywriting. It reads fields.

App, SaaS or booking system with an API: build it this week. The early shelf is thin, and 38 connectors is an empty mall. Getting in before the partners fill the aisles is the whole play.

Service business (plumber, salon, contractor): a connector matters less than your phone. Real talk, Muse is already calling you. Ujjal Bhattacharjee had Muse call three seal-coating contractors about a driveway job. The phone tree took the details and never called back. One went to voicemail. One hung up on the agent.

The verdict: “All the businesses lost the job.”

That’s the whole lesson for service businesses. The agent is the customer now, and it doesn’t leave twice.

The fine print Meta hasn’t written yet

This is where I take my hype hat off. The shelf is real. The lease isn’t signed.

Meta hasn’t published a fee, a revenue share, a review timeline, an SDK or developer terms. One builder put it best: the platform page is “describe your product, we review it, maybe it shows up.”

And nobody’s said how Muse picks between two connectors that do the same thing. RuntimeWire flagged it, and one investor on X argued the fee is small money next to who controls that shelf. Editors picking featured placement is the only ranking signal Meta has named. Watch that space like a landlord watches rent.

Then the friction. Amazon blocked Muse the weekend before Connect, saying it doesn’t identify itself and stores customer credentials. One owner running a Meta Business Suite inbox through Muse says Meta keeps flagging the account as hacked because Muse logs in from different IPs. Meta’s agent tripping Meta’s own alarms.

And trust is the ceiling. An Oppenheimer survey found only 8% of consumers would trust Meta with their passwords. Your connector should ask for the least access it can get away with.

As for the keynote itself… I said it the night of: “Their Developer conferences feel like Open Mic show.” The product is strong. The stage show isn’t. Don’t let the presentation make you sleep on the platform.

The playbook: exactly what to type

Same rule I give everybody. Don’t prompt your agent. Let it interview you.

1. The “am I already in?” check (Muse or any agent with browser access)

I sell on Shopify. Walk me through checking whether Meta's direct checkout for Muse is on for my store.
Before you start, interview me one question at a time: what I sell, which countries I ship to, whether I sell subscriptions or bundles, and whether my refund policy is published.
Then tell me which of my products qualify, which don't and why, and what I should fix first. Don't change any settings without asking me.

2. The customer-request list (before you build anything)

Act like a customer who uses an AI agent for everything. My business is [what you sell, where, to whom].
Interview me first, one question at a time, until you understand how people buy from me today.
Then write the 10 requests a customer would most likely type into their agent about a business like mine, ranked by how much money each one could make me.

3. The connector build (paste into your coding agent)

I want to submit a Muse connector at muse.ai/platform. Read my project first and interview me before changing anything.
Goal: a hosted HTTPS API (or remote MCP server) that answers these customer requests: [paste your top 3 from prompt 2].
Requirements: read-only by default, API key or OAuth PKCE auth, an OpenAPI spec, and docs a reviewer can test in five minutes.
Show me the plan and the smallest scope that works before you write code.

4. The “agent called my business” test

Pretend you're an AI agent calling my business to [book a job / get a quote / check stock] for a customer.
Here's my current phone flow and website: [describe it].
Tell me every place you would get stuck, give up, or go to a competitor instead. Then rewrite my phone greeting and FAQ page so an agent gets what it needs in one pass.

5. The submission packet

Help me prepare my Muse connector submission. Interview me about my product one question at a time.
Then draft: a two-sentence description of what the connector does, five example requests a user would make, a plain-English privacy policy section covering what data the connector sees, and a checklist of everything I still need (terms, 512x512 icon, auth method, docs URL).

The bottom line

Muse is building a mall where the shoppers are agents. Right now the rent is free, the shelf is mostly empty, and the lease has blanks in it.

That’s exactly when you want in. Get your door open, keep your access tight, and answer the phone like the next caller is a robot… because it might be.

For how Muse stacks up as an employee inside your business, see Grok Bot vs Meta Muse. If you’re new to all this, start with what an AI agent actually is, then my first look at Meta’s Muse agent.

#TheAIMogul