← Blog

Give Claude the Keys to Your Checkout: Selling with an AI Agent, Safely

Sam Bakker · Founder, gocushy · July 16, 2026

Most "AI + selling" content is about writing copy. This post is about something different: giving Claude operational control of your sales machinery — the products, the offers, the refunds, the affiliate ledger — and being able to sleep afterwards.

gocushy is a checkout platform built MCP-first: 22 agent tools that let any MCP client operate a real funnel on your own Stripe account. If you're new to the whole idea, start with What is an MCP checkout? This post assumes you're sold on the concept and want the Claude-side how-to. (Using ChatGPT instead? There's a mirror of this guide for ChatGPT.)

Setup: two minutes of config

You need a gocushy account (sign up here) and your API key — it starts with gc_ and lives in your dashboard. Then point Claude at the MCP server.

Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gocushy": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@gocushy/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GOCUSHY_API_KEY": "gc_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

One command in your terminal:

claude mcp add gocushy \
  --env GOCUSHY_API_KEY=gc_your_key_here \
  -- npx -y @gocushy/mcp

Restart the client and Claude has the full toolset: catalog tools (create_product, import_products — one command pulls in your existing Stripe catalog), offer and checkout tools (create_offer, update_checkout, get_checkout_link, get_embed_code), reporting (get_sales, list_orders), money-back (refund_order, cancel_subscription), affiliates, email connections, and webhooks. The full tool reference is in the developer docs.

One step stays human, on purpose: connecting your Stripe account. Claude can kick it off with connect_payment, but Stripe's onboarding — identity, bank account, KYC — is yours to complete. That's the law, and it's the only dashboard-ish thing you'll do. Everything after runs from conversation. Full setup details are in the docs.

Four workflows you'll actually run

1. Launch-day ops

Claude calls get_sales and list_orders and answers in plain English: revenue, orders, which offer is pulling, what percentage of buyers took the order bump. On launch day this replaces the compulsive dashboard-refresh with a running conversation — "how's the last hour?", "any failed payments?", "export today's orders." Because the data comes back structured, Claude doesn't just report it; it can act on what it sees, which is where the next workflow comes in.

2. Iterating a checkout mid-launch

gocushy checkouts are built from blocks — headline, subheadline, up to six benefit bullets, up to three testimonials, a guarantee badge, hero image, button text, brand accent, and an honest countdown. Claude sets any of them through update_checkout. It's "described, not designed": the agent supplies the words, the layout is structurally locked, so there is no way to end up with a broken page at 2pm on launch day.

3. Processing a refund

One call to refund_order. The money goes back through your Stripe, any affiliate commission on that order is clawed back automatically, your order.refunded webhook fires, and if you've connected Kit, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign, the buyer gets tagged so your sequences respond appropriately. What used to be a five-tab chore is a sentence.

4. The weekly affiliate payout run

Commissions in gocushy sit in a 30-day holdback before they're due — refund protection built into the ledger. Claude lists what's payable per affiliate, you send the money however you pay your partners (gocushy never holds or moves affiliate funds), and Claude calls mark_commissions_paid to keep the ledger clean. Recurring commissions on subscription renewals show up in the same run. More on running a program this way in our affiliate program guide.

The guardrails are the product

Here's the part that matters more than any workflow. The honest answer to "should I let an AI run my sales?" depends entirely on what the AI can't do. We spent more engineering effort on the impossible list than the possible one — 67 automated tests and 40+ adversarial review findings fixed before launch — because an agent platform without hard limits isn't a product, it's a liability with an API.

The philosophy: capability should live in the tools, and safety should live in the architecture. We don't rely on the agent being well-behaved, well-prompted, or even competent. A confused agent, a bad prompt, or a compromised API key can waste your time — it cannot drain your Stripe balance, charge a buyer the wrong amount, or run a fake "ends at midnight!" timer that quietly resets. The worst case is bounded, and that bound is what makes handing over the keys sane rather than reckless.

Tax works the same way: checkouts calculate real tax via Stripe Tax on your registrations, with EU B2B reverse charge and NZ/AU GST handled, and compliant sequentially-numbered invoices generated automatically — the agent can't opt a checkout out of any of it.

Nothing in this post is tax or legal advice — talk to your accountant about where you're registered and what you owe.

When something else is the better choice

Straight up: if you want a visual drag-and-drop page builder with a big template library and you have no interest in agents operating your stack, ThriveCart and SamCart are mature, proven tools with long track records — and as of this writing, neither offers an MCP surface an agent can operate, which is exactly the axis we compete on. Likewise, if you'd rather a merchant of record handle global tax filing as the reseller of your products, tools like Paddle or Lemon Squeezy do that — the trade-off is that they sit between you and your customers, and their pricing reflects the service. We wrote up that trade-off in merchant of record vs. your own Stripe. gocushy's bet is narrower: your Stripe, your customers, and an AI that does the operating.

FAQ

Sam Bakker is the founder of gocushy. He's spent a decade building funnel software for creators, and is based in New Zealand.