The agent readiness checklist

What makes a site ready for AI agents?

It depends on what you want from them. To be cited, agents need to fetch your pages, read the facts in plain HTML and find a direct answer to the question they were asked. To become a customer, they also need docs in markdown, an API spec, and a way to get a test key without a person clearing email, phone or card checks. The checklist covers both, in that order.

1. Let agents in 6 checksIf a crawler or assistant can't fetch the page, nothing else on this list matters. First check: robots.txt lets user-triggered agents in.
2. Make the page machine-readable 9 checksAgents read your accessibility tree and raw HTML, not your design. First check: Content is in the raw HTML, server-rendered.
3. Write answer-ready copy 7 checksAnswer engines quote pages that answer the question plainly. First check: A clear definition replaces the slogan.
4. Keep facts fresh and provable 6 checksEngines prefer recent, dated, consistent facts. First check: Key facts carry an "as of" date.
5. Give agents the docs in their format 6 checksCheap-to-read docs get read. Expensive ones get guessed. First check: /llms.txt indexes your docs.
6. Let agents sign up and act 12 checksBeing recommended is half of it. The other half is the agent finishing the signup. First check: Self-serve API keys, shown on the first docs page.
7. Cover the questions around yours 4 checksAnswer engines split one prompt into many searches. Be the answer to each. First check: A page per use case or audience.