How to make your website ready for AI agents

Make the live page parseable

Browser agents read the accessibility tree, the same structural map screen readers use. Semantic tags help: <main>, <nav>, <button> for actions, and a <label> on every field. Tap targets around 24 by 24 pixels or larger give multimodal agents a safer click target.

Critical facts belong in the first HTML response. Server-side rendering keeps offers, prices, and booking paths in the raw markup. Hover-only menus, infinite scroll, and overlays that never appear in the first response hide those facts from request-only readers.

That work lives in your theme and templates. AgentReadyWebsite leaves that HTML in place. The free Pre-Check can surface accessibility-tree integrity as an advisory gap. We do not score it, and we do not rewrite your theme.

Sources: Chrome Lighthouse, Accessibility for agents • Marie Haynes, Lighthouse walkthrough (May 2026)

Publish agent files at known paths

Agents look for a short briefing before they crawl every page. The foundational file is llms.txt at your domain root: one # heading, a > summary, and named ## sections with links. Jeremy Howard proposed that convention in September 2024. Google Chrome's Lighthouse 13.3 added an audit for it under Agentic Browsing in May 2026.

The rest of a complete package sits beside it. robots.txt needs named AI-crawler rules. sitemap.xml lists the URLs. schema.jsonld states the organization and services in Schema.org JSON-LD. Well-known paths carry the agent card, permissions, skills index, MCP server card, API catalog, and commerce profile. Link the installed files from the page so agents can find them without guessing the path.

Our position is that llms.txt is foundational for agent-readiness. Google Search has been clear that the file is not a ranking signal and is not required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. The Chrome audit is for agentic browsing, a different surface.

See every file we ship, who governs it, and how it is scored: the agent-readiness package.

Sources: Jeremy Howard, llms.txt proposal • Chrome Lighthouse, llms.txt audit

Check what is already present

A free scan is a useful first look. Chrome DevTools Lighthouse can show the llms.txt audit. Other public scanners check robots rules, sitemaps, Markdown negotiation, or live form completion. Their scores do not agree with each other, and a high score on one tool is not a citation in ChatGPT or Perplexity.

AgentReadyWebsite's free Pre-Check grades the files we install. You get an Agent Readiness Score from 0 to 100, four dimension scores, and a list of missing files. No signup. A scanner reports gaps. Installing the package is a separate step.

Install a generated package if you want the files written for you

You can write these files by hand, or ask a coding agent to draft them, if you already have a repository and someone who will maintain them. Many owners want the files generated from their live site and a zip they can upload.

That is the AgentReadyWebsite offer. We analyze public pages, build a standards-aligned package (typically 13 files; sized by what the site needs), and email the zip. You upload it to the site root and .well-known folder, usually in 5 to 10 minutes. WordPress sites can use our free installer plugin. For the next 12 months, Domain Watch checks that those files stay hosted and current. Prices are one-time: Basic $199, Medium $599, Complex $1,399, by page count.

Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix are coming soon. Pre-Check holds an early-access spot. AgentReadyWebsite is a commercial install package. A separate project at AgentReady.org publishes an open specification. We do not publish a Shopify app. See the naming FAQ if you have seen AgentReady.org or a similarly named store app.