Bots and automated agents together now make more than half of web traffic on Cloudflare's network (July 2026); AI agents alone are a small but fast-growing share. MCP lets agents query your ERP, WebMCP lets them use your website's forms, and the supplier an agent can read is the one it recommends. GETMILK builds a read-only MCP server from €2,900.
Are AI agents really becoming customers, and should a manufacturer in Portugal do anything about it? Yes, and the numbers are already here. On 1 July 2026 Cloudflare reported that, on its network, bots and automated agents together now make more than half of all web traffic [1]. Most of that is still ordinary bots: in Cloudflare's 2025 review humans made 47% of HTML requests, non-AI bots 44% and AI bots 4.2% [2]. AI agents alone are a small share, but the fastest-growing one: crawling triggered by a user asking an AI to do something grew more than 15 times during 2025 [2]. The companies whose catalogue an agent can query easily are the ones it will recommend.
Key facts
- More than 50% of traffic on Cloudflare's network is non-human (bots and agents combined, 1 July 2026) [1]; AI bots were 4.2% of HTML requests in 2025 [2].
- AI "user action" crawling, where an agent fetches pages on behalf of a person, grew more than 15x in 2025 [2].
- MCP, the standard that lets AI assistants ask outside systems questions and request actions, moved to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation on 9 December 2025 and is supported by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot [4].
- WebMCP, a Google and Microsoft draft that lets a web page offer actions to an AI assistant working in the browser, entered a public Chrome 149 trial in June 2026; it is a Community Group draft, not a W3C standard [8] [10].
- Only 11.5% of Portuguese enterprises with 10 or more employees used AI in 2025, against 20.0% in the EU [15].
Why do I think this matters more than the AI hype?
This section is my opinion, as the founder of GETMILK.
AI is good, but on its own it is a clever intern with no access to anything. The gain comes when you give it the right tools, and especially when you build your own tools next to the established ones. An assistant that can read your stock, machine list and lead times knows what only you know. That is where you close gaps in production and, at least for a while, get ahead of competitors who are still waiting.
The second half of the argument is about who is asking. Your catalogue has always been for people. Now it can also be for every AI agent that a buyer, an engineer or a procurement team sends out to do the research. Agents want speed and efficiency: a clear answer, in a structure they can read, without a PDF brochure and a contact form in the way. Cloudflare's own framing is that sites need to be "readable, discoverable, callable, and payable" for agents [3]. The company whose catalogue any agent can query, and which therefore gets recommended, gets the customers.
It is not only volume and speed. AI now helps with research, validation and drafting, so almost every layer of the company lifecycle can change: how you find buyers, how you check a drawing, how you prepare a quote, how you write the offer. If you are not doing it, others are. To stay afloat you at least need to look around. To grow, experimenting with new workflows is a must.
The data says Portugal has room to move. Eurostat puts AI use at 11.5% of Portuguese firms with 10+ employees in 2025, up from 8.6% in 2024, while the EU average reached 20.0% [15] [14]. The Commission's 2026 country report says Portugal lags its peers in enterprise uptake of cloud and AI [17]. Across the EU, the most cited barrier among firms that considered AI was lack of relevant expertise, at 70.89% [16].
What is MCP, and how is it different from WebMCP?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) runs on your side, next to your systems. You run a small service that offers a fixed list of approved questions and actions, each with a clear description, and any compatible AI assistant can find and use them [6]. Since December 2025 it sits in the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, co-founded by Anthropic, Block and OpenAI; at the time, the software kits for building it were downloaded over 97 million times a month and 10,000 servers were active [4]. ERP vendors ship their own: Microsoft's Business Central MCP server is read-only by default, and an administrator has to switch on any changes [5]. We covered the ERP side in detail in our guide to connecting Odoo, SAP, PHC or Primavera through MCP.
WebMCP works in the browser. It was proposed by engineers at Microsoft and Google in August 2025 [7]. A web page tells an AI assistant working in the browser which actions it may take, either by marking up ordinary forms, such as a quote request form, or through the page's own programming [9]. The technical details have already changed between drafts, so your web team should not build on them until they settle [8]. It is a Draft Community Group Report, which the document itself says is not a W3C standard [8]. Chrome ran an early preview from February 2026 and opened a public trial with Chrome 149 in June 2026 [9] [10].
| MCP | WebMCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Your server, next to the ERP or database | Inside your web page, in the visitor's browser |
| Who uses it | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, your own agents [4] | An assistant working in the browser on a user's behalf [7] |
| How actions are described | A name and a plain description of each question and its inputs [6] | Your existing web forms, or the page's own programming [9] |
| Status (September 2026) | Open standard under the Linux Foundation [4] | Community Group draft; public Chrome trial [8] [10] |
| Good first use | Read-only stock, capability and lead-time queries | Quote request or contact forms an agent can fill correctly |
Where are agent checkout protocols going?
The direction of travel is that agents will not only read but also buy. Stripe and OpenAI released the Agentic Commerce Protocol on 29 September 2025, powering Instant Checkout in ChatGPT [11]. Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol on 11 January 2026 with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart; it covers discovery, checkout and order management and can be connected through standard software links, including MCP [12]. Both are built for retail. Industrial B2B will move more slowly, but the pattern is the same: structured catalogue, then quote, then order. If your website is still hard for a machine to read, start with our checklist on whether your factory website is readable by ChatGPT.
What would a Portuguese manufacturer actually expose to agents?
This is GETMILK's design for a typical 20 to 200 person supplier in metal, plastics or cork. It is a proposal, not a product any vendor sells today.
| What the agent can ask | What the agent gets | Mode | Safeguard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search parts | Parts or families matching material, process and size | Read-only | Public catalogue data only |
| Capabilities | Machines, processes, max dimensions, tolerances, certifications | Read-only | Reviewed text, dated |
| Lead time | Typical lead time band for a part family | Read-only | Ranges, never live capacity |
| Material check | Whether a material grade is stocked or sourced | Read-only | No supplier prices |
| Quote request | Creates a draft RFQ with drawing and quantities | Draft only | A person reviews and sends every quote |
| Order status | Status of an existing order for a signed-in buyer | Read-only | Secure sign-in; buyer sees own orders only |
The design follows the specifications. The MCP spec says a person should always be able to refuse an action the assistant wants to take, and that every use should be logged for audit [6]. The WebMCP draft names the risks: hidden instructions slipped into text, an assistant misreading what the user wants, private data leaking because a form asks for too much, data crossing between websites, and private browsing; it proposes marking actions that have consequences [8]. The OECD's September 2026 interviews found no organisation running agents with unrestricted autonomy; high-impact actions such as payments or system changes typically need explicit human approval [13]. So: read-only first, every request logged, and a person approves anything that commits the company.
How does GETMILK use its own MCP server?
We run one. getmilk.tech has its own MCP server with 57 actions. Assistants use them to turn a sentence such as "make 200 of X" into a sourcing project, record material and process requirements, shortlist manufacturers from our base with a reason for each, and assemble quote request packages.
What the system enforces is the part worth copying. Everyone signs in, and the production actions are for administrators only, checked on every single request rather than once per session. Every failure is written to an error log; nothing is swallowed. Actions that only read are marked as read-only. And the consequential steps stop at a person: the assistant drafts emails to makers but "nothing is sent" until someone approves the batch, accepting and ordering quotes is done by a person, and a shared producer package needs approval on a review page before it is published. This describes how we work, not proof that it will pay back for you. For the maths on which agent jobs do pay back, see AI agents in a factory: use cases that pay back.
Do I need this now, or can I wait?
You can wait on WebMCP. It is a draft in a browser trial and the details may still change [8] [10].
What to do next
- Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to find a supplier like you in Portugal for one of your typical parts. Note whether you appear and what they say about you.
- List the five questions buyers ask most often (stock, material, tolerance, lead time, certification) and check which ones your website or ERP can answer without a person.
- If the gap is data your ERP already holds, GETMILK builds a read-only MCP server from €2,900 (up to 12 read-only questions, secure sign-in and a log of every request). If the gap is the website itself, a manufacturer website starts from €2,400. If neither gap exists, you do not need us yet.
References
- Cloudflare. The agentic Internet: bot report (more than 50% of traffic is now non-human) (1 July 2026)
- Cloudflare. Cloudflare Radar 2025 Year in Review (December 2025 (data to 2 December 2025))
- Cloudflare. The agentic Internet: readable, discoverable, callable, and payable (6 August 2026)
- Model Context Protocol. MCP joins the Agentic AI Foundation (9 December 2025)
- Microsoft Learn. Business Central MCP Server overview and setup (3 May 2026, updated 17 June 2026)
- Model Context Protocol. Model Context Protocol specification: Tools (revision 2026-07-28) (28 July 2026)
- W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group (authors from Microsoft and Google). WebMCP explainer (13 August 2025)
- W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group. WebMCP, Draft Community Group Report (26 September 2026)
- Chrome for Developers. WebMCP is available for early preview (10 February 2026)
- Chrome for Developers. WebMCP origin trial (June 2026 (Chrome 149))
- Stripe. Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol codeveloped with OpenAI (29 September 2025)
- Google for Developers. Under the hood: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) (11 January 2026)
- OECD. Agentic AI in organisations: early insights from practitioner interviews (OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers No. 65) (September 2026)
- Eurostat. 20% of EU enterprises use AI technologies (11 December 2025)
- Eurostat. Enterprises using AI technologies, enterprises with 10 or more employees, Portugal and EU (isoc_eb_ai) (2025 data, updated 15 June 2026)
- Eurostat. Use of artificial intelligence in enterprises (2025 data, accessed 28 September 2026)
- European Commission. Portugal's 2026 Digital Decade Country Report (2026, accessed 28 September 2026)
Questions people ask
- Is 50% of internet traffic AI agents?
- No. Cloudflare reported in July 2026 that bots and automated agents together make more than half of traffic on its network. AI bots were 4.2% of HTML requests in 2025; they are the fastest-growing part, not the majority.
- Do I need WebMCP on my website now?
- Not yet for most manufacturers. WebMCP is a Community Group draft in a public Chrome trial and its details may still change. Clear capability pages and a working quote form help agents today.
- Can an AI agent place an order with my company by itself?
- Only if you let it. A well-designed MCP server keeps order and quote actions as drafts, logs every request and needs a person to approve anything that commits the company.
- Which AI assistants can connect to an MCP server?
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Visual Studio Code all support MCP, as do agents you build yourself.