The AI Shortlist Checklist – Mathew's Library

01 What Muse is reportedly told to do

Muse is the AI agent Meta launched on September 8, 2026 that can find products and check out for a shopper. Profound, a company that sells software tracking how AI agents treat brands, says it pulled Muse's shopping instructions on September 25. State of Brand, a trade publication, published what's in the file. Meta hasn't commented.

The rule against you. The file reportedly calls it "imperative" that the top five products come from well-known merchants, and repeats the idea three times: ranking, display and formatting. It doesn't define well-known. The rule for you. When a shopper names a brand, Muse reportedly puts that brand's own store at the top, other sellers below. By default it prefers brands that sell direct over resellers.

How sure is this? It's one document. Profound has a reason to want marketers paying attention, and State of Brand says so. Profound itself warns the file may have changed since late September. Treat it as a look at how these agents are being built, not as law.

So the checklist has two jobs: get found, then be the name the shopper types.

02 Job one: get into the pool it reads

On each request, Muse runs two searches at once. One is Meta's product catalog, the product list behind shopping on Instagram and Facebook. The other is a browser visiting stores on the open web: no more than three per request, ten products at most.

In Profound's own test (50 requests, one category, one account, which it calls small and exploratory), the catalog supplied about 95% of the options, but most of the six products shown came from the browser. Its economist, Jennifer Zou, drew the line by size: if you're a smaller brand, "Shopify/Meta catalog integration is a more worthwhile investment."

Put your products in Meta's catalog. If you sell on Shopify, that's the "Shopify/Meta catalog integration" Zou means: your store's products feeding Meta's catalog.

Turn on checkout there. Only catalog products flagged for what the file calls agentic checkout can be bought or saved to a cart inside the chat.

Check your category's grade. The file rates the catalog good for fashion, home decor and beauty, only okay for everything else. Anything else: your website carries more of the weight.

Agentic checkout, in plain words: the agent buys inside the chat. Without it, Muse clicks through your own checkout, and in the file's words, "products without that capability have no cart."

03 The page check

Every page Muse finds reportedly has to pass a few checks, and prices outside the normal range for that product get thrown out, far above or far below. Run this on every product page, best sellers first.

One product per page. A real product page, not a search or category page.

A real product photo. Placeholders and logos get thrown out.

Stock the agent can see. In stock and ready to add to a cart.

A price inside your category's normal range. Pricing far under the big names can get you filtered instead of found.

The details spelled out in words. Size, fit, or the exact device a part fits. Muse asks the shopper these one at a time before it searches, instead of guessing.

Worth knowing. None of this moves you to the top. Once you're in the pool, the well-known names still go first. That's what job two is for.

04 Job two: be the name people say

Name a brand, and its own store goes first. So you're not only trying to be found by the agent. You're trying to be the word the shopper types into it.

A name people can say and spell. Brand and product names someone can type into a chat without looking them up.

Sell everything on your own store. Someone who asks for you by name should be able to buy it all from you, even if resellers carry most of your sales. Amazon has blocked Muse since September 20, 2026.

Tag your products in Instagram posts. When a shopper shares a post with tagged products, the file reportedly sends Muse straight to those items and skips the search.

Get your name said by other people. Customers, creators, reviewers. Each is another shopper who might say it to an agent.

05 Measure what you can see

You probably won't see Muse in your analytics. Profound says it doesn't identify itself when it browses, looks like a regular visitor, and its answers don't name the sites it read. So track the closest thing you can see to what the file rewards: how many people search for you by name, month after month.

Monthly name-search log

MONTH: [MONTH YEAR]
Searches for our brand name: [NUMBER] Last month: [NUMBER]
Searches for our product names: [NUMBER] Last month: [NUMBER]
Page check done on: [PRODUCTS]
In Meta's catalog with checkout on: [yes / no]
New tagged Instagram posts: [NUMBER]

The agent decides before the shopper sees anything. Be the name they already said.

Sources

State of Brand: Meta told its shopping agent to rank well-known merchants first PPC Land: Meta's shopping agent must fill its top 5 picks with well-known merchants Profound: The era of personal agents, Muse and Instinct Meta: Muse for Small Business The Star: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI agent from its retail site Search Engine Journal: Amazon blocked Meta's Muse

Mathew's LibraryLibrary card

Free access

Keep reading free with your library card

One email opens this checklist and all 3 resources in Mathew's library. No account, no password.