Building Opal, week of Oct 12: your assistant can buy a membership, in testing

Where we’ve been. Last week I showed the owners we’re building for (Field Notes 02) and said the next update would come one week later. Here it is. This one is about something we’re still testing, so I’ll be plain about what’s real today and what isn’t.

What shipped this week

• Your assistant can buy a membership, in testing. Someone who wants to join your membership can ask their AI assistant to sign them up. We’re testing a way for that assistant to finish the job and buy the membership on your site. It runs in test mode only: no real payments are being taken, and it isn’t on any site yet.
• It’s off until you switch it on. There are two switches, and both start off: “Let AI assistants buy memberships” for your site, and “Available to AI assistants” on each membership. An assistant can only buy what you’ve chosen. It works on every MemberPress.ai plan, free included.
• A person says yes to the exact price. Nothing is charged until a person approves the exact price: the buyer, signed in to your site, or you, as the site’s admin. No setting skips that step. If the price changes after it was approved, the purchase is refused, so nobody pays an amount they didn’t see.
• It lands like any other sale. The purchase is recorded in MemberPress as a normal MemberPress purchase.
• The same rule for your own account. Your own AI assistant can buy MemberPress.ai credits or a prepaid month of the paid plan, but only once you’ve approved the exact price in the MemberPress.ai app. It can’t approve its own purchase, and each purchase is charged at most once.

The approval steps are on AI assistants that can buy your membership, and the common questions are in the announcement.

What we learned

You’d want the member who asks their assistant to join. You probably wouldn’t want software spending someone’s money without a person saying yes, and neither would we, so that’s where we started. We also put the gaps on the page instead of hiding them: renewals aren’t automatic yet, so if a membership is a recurring one, an assistant’s purchase records the first period only. When it’s ready, I’d rather you hear what it can’t do from us first.

What’s next

• Next: more testing. It reaches your site only when it’s ready.
• Next: the next of these updates, one week from today.
• Vision: someone who wants to join says so to the assistant they already use, and the membership shows up in MemberPress like any other. You still choose what’s for sale.