--- type: Agentic Web Standard title: "agents.txt" description: "Which agent-facing protocols (payments, auth, MCP, skills, A2A) does this site speak, and where?" resource: "https://agents-txt.com/spec/" tags: ["discover", "well-known-file", "community", "discover-my-api", "describe-agent-capabilities"] status: draft generated: { by: agenticweb-builder/1.0, at: 2026-10-30T00:00:00Z } verified: { by: process:agenticweb-engine, at: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z } stale_after: 2026-11-28T00:00:00Z sources: - id: ref-1 resource: "https://agents-txt.com/spec/" title: "agents.txt Standard, agents.txt Standard v1.0 (Status: Draft; dated \"Published 2025-10-13\" on the page), checked 2026-10-29: \"Status Draft This document is a work in progress and subject to change.\" \"Authors hsolosoftworks Maintainer hsolosoftworks.com Contact contact@agents-txt.com Published 2025-10-13\" \"agents.txt (with companion agents.json) is a lightweight, protocol-agnostic capability declaration format that publicly announces what agent-interaction protocols and features a website supports.\" \"agents.txt is the announcement layer. It tells an agent which protocols a site speaks.\" \"agents.txt MUST be served at /agents.txt. agents.json SHOULD be served at /agents.json.\" \"This is distinct from agents.txt and concerns training/indexing preferences, not agent interaction capabilities.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-2 resource: "https://agents-txt.com/about/" title: "agents.txt Standard, About, checked 2026-10-29: \"The agents.txt working group on GitHub.\" \"Structural changes (new directives, schema fields, conformance shifts) require an RFC-style description in the pull request and two reviewer approvals.\" \"It is Layer 4 of the agent-readiness stack: discovery on top of llms.txt (Layer 3), sitemap.xml (Layer 2), and robots.txt (Layer 1).\" \"Validate the output with the live audit tool or the audit_site MCP tool at mcp.agents-txt.com.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-3 resource: "https://agents-txt.com/agents.txt" title: "agents.txt Standard, reference file /agents.txt on agents-txt.com, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Standard: https://agents-txt.com\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-4 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/agents-txt/agents-txt" title: "GitHub API, agents-txt/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-05-13 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-05-13\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-5 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/agents-txt/agents-txt/commits?per_page=100" title: "GitHub API, agents-txt/agents-txt commits (dates in UTC), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-05-10\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-6 resource: "https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=agents-txt.com&output=json&limit=5" title: "Internet Archive Wayback Machine, capture index for agents-txt.com (first captures; used only to date the site), checked 2026-10-29: \"20260518\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-7 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/dennj/agents.txt" title: "GitHub API, dennj/agents.txt repository record (created 2025-02-15 UTC; homepage agentstxt.dev), checked 2026-10-29: \"2025-02-15\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-8 resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dennj/agents.txt/main/README.md" title: "dennj/agents.txt, README.md, checked 2026-10-29: \"This project encourages businesses to install an agents.txt file to enable search engines to discover their AI agents and agent services.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-9 resource: "https://web.archive.org/web/20260214213231id_/https://agentstxt.dev/" title: "Internet Archive Wayback Machine, agentstxt.dev as captured 2026-02-14 (the live domain now redirects, so the archived copy is used), checked 2026-10-29: \"agents.txt v0.0.2 alpha We are building an open standard to create a decentralized, democratic Internet of Agents.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-10 resource: "https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=agentstxt.dev&output=json&limit=8" title: "Internet Archive Wayback Machine, capture index for agentstxt.dev, checked 2026-10-29: \"agentstxt.dev\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-11 resource: "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-srijal-agents-policy-00.txt" title: "S. Dutta, AGENTS.TXT: Strict Policy File for Automated Clients, draft-srijal-agents-policy-00, 7 October 2025, checked 2026-10-29: \"AGENTS.TXT: Strict Policy File for Automated Clients\" \"Malformed files are treated as fully restrictive to prevent unintended access.\" \"The canonical path for the file is /agents.txt.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-12 resource: "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-srijal-agents-policy/" title: "IETF Datatracker, draft-srijal-agents-policy, checked 2026-10-29: \"Document Type Expired Internet-Draft (individual)\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-13 resource: "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown-00.txt" title: "K. Cardillo, AGENTS.TXT: Capability Declarations for Web Agents, draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown-00, 12 June 2026, checked 2026-10-29: \"This document requests registration of two Well-Known URIs under the \"/.well-known/\" path: \"agents.txt\" and \"agents.json\".\" \"The \"agents.txt\" file MUST be served at: https://example.com/.well-known/agents.txt\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-14 resource: "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown/" title: "IETF Datatracker, draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown, checked 2026-10-29: \"Document Type Active Internet-Draft (individual) Author Kayla Cardillo\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-15 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/kaylacar/agents-txt" title: "GitHub API, kaylacar/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-02-22 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-02-22\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-16 resource: "https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris-1.csv" title: "IANA, Well-Known URIs registry (CSV), checked 2026-10-29: \"URI Suffix,Reference,Status,Change Controller\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-17 resource: "https://datatracker.ietf.org/api/v1/doc/document/?name__contains=agents&type=draft&format=json&limit=200" title: "IETF Datatracker API, Internet-Drafts whose name contains \"agents\", checked 2026-10-29: \"draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-18 resource: "https://dev.to/jaspervanveen/agentstxt-a-proposed-web-standard-for-ai-agents-20lb" title: "Jasper van Veen, DEV Community, agent-manifest.txt — a proposed web standard for AI agents (formerly agents.txt), posted 2026-03-13, edited 2026-03-27, checked 2026-10-29: \"This proposal has been renamed from agents.txt to agent-manifest.txt.\" \"the agents.txt namespace became crowded: an independent IETF Internet-Draft (draft-srijal-agents-policy-00) had already claimed that filename, and multiple community projects were independently using it for different purposes.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-19 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/jaspervanveen/agents-brief.txt" title: "GitHub API, jaspervanveen/agents-brief.txt repository record (created 2026-03-09 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-03-09\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-20 resource: "https://asturwebs.es/agents.txt" title: "AsturWebs, /agents.txt on asturwebs.es, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Version: 2.0 # Author: Pedro Luis Cuevas Villarrubia\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-21 resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/asturwebs/agents-txt" title: "GitHub API, asturwebs/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-05-12 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-05-12\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-22 resource: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19116" title: "Eranga Bandara and 20 other authors, Towards an Agent-First Web: Redesigning the Web for AI Agents, arXiv:2606.19116, submitted 2026-06-17, checked 2026-10-29: \"Towards an Agent-First Web: Redesigning the Web for AI Agents\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-23 resource: "https://arxiv.org/html/2606.19116v1" title: "Same paper, HTML version (v1), section 4.6 \"A New agents.txt Standard\", checked 2026-10-29: \"We propose agents.txt, a structured declaration file served at a well-known URL (/.well-known/agents.txt)\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-24 resource: "https://getlago.com/agents.txt" title: "Lago, /agents.txt on getlago.com, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Standard: https://agents-txt.com\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-25 resource: "https://pg.ddx.io/agents.txt" title: "pg.ddx.io, /agents.txt, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Standard: https://agents-txt.com\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-26 resource: "https://www.general-informatics.com/agents.txt" title: "General Informatics, /agents.txt on www.general-informatics.com, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Standard: https://agents-txt.com\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-27 resource: "https://dfxintel.com/agents.txt" title: "DFX Intel, /agents.txt on dfxintel.com, checked 2026-10-29: \"# Standard: https://agents-txt.com\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-28 resource: "https://mcpproxy.app/blog/2026-04-10-agents-txt-expired/" title: "Algis Dumbris, MCPProxy Blog, The agents.txt Draft Just Expired, 2026-04-10, checked 2026-10-29: \"Today, April 10, 2026, draft-srijal-agents-policy-00 quietly expired.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-29 resource: "https://journal.kvibber.com/2026/05/agents-txt-on-dreamhost/" title: "Kelson, K-Squared Ramblings, New agents.txt file found on DreamHost, 2026-05-13, checked 2026-10-29: \"This morning I discovered that a new file had been added, agents.txt, to the root of each site, on May 7.\" \"The first agents.txt spec I found used a completely different syntax and a completely different purpose.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-30 resource: "https://kvibber.com/agents.txt" title: "kvibber.com, /agents.txt (a DreamHost-hosted site), checked 2026-10-29: \"Allow-Training: no Allow-RAG: yes Allow-Actions: no\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z - id: ref-31 resource: "https://built2winweb.com/blog/agent-discovery-files/" title: "Jacob Campbell, BuiltToWinWeb, Agent Discovery Files Explained, 2026-10-05, checked 2026-10-29: \"/agents.txt: a newer, less settled convention for stating, in plain text, what agents may do on a site and where its agent interfaces are. There are competing drafts; treat it as a human-readable pointer file rather than a contract.\"" last_modified: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z --- # agents.txt agents.txt is an agentic-web standard (well-known file — /agents.txt) at step 1, Discover, governed by Its maintainers on GitHub: The agents.txt working group on GitHub. Structural changes require an RFC-style description in the pull request and two reviewer approvals; its status is "Status Draft This document is a work in progress and subject to change". It answers: "Which agent-facing protocols (payments, auth, MCP, skills, A2A) does this site speak, and where?" Implementation status is prototype, last verified 2026-10-29. # Overview The agents.txt Standard proposes a short text file at the root of a website that tells visiting AI agents which agent protocols the site supports and where to find them: "agents.txt (with companion agents.json) is a lightweight, protocol-agnostic capability declaration format that publicly announces what agent-interaction protocols and features a website supports." [^ref-1]. Its directives point to payment protocols such as x402 and MPP, authorisation methods, MCP servers, skill files, A2A AgentCards, UCP profiles and WebMCP pages, while the companion agents.json carries the structured detail [^ref-1][^ref-2]. The file itself only announces; payments, sign-in and tool calls still happen in each protocol's own layer [^ref-1]. Its authors present it as the layer above robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt: "It is Layer 4 of the agent-readiness stack: discovery on top of llms.txt (Layer 3), sitemap.xml (Layer 2), and robots.txt (Layer 1)." [^ref-2] # Examples ```http GET {origin}/agents.txt # parse: 200 response with a text/plain body listing supported protocols (e.g. `Protocols: x402, mpp`) or per-agent directives, per whichever competing grammar the site chose to implement # on absent: No agents.txt at the site root under any of the competing conventions; given the fragmentation, absence is a weak signal either way ``` # Knowledge Graph * **Lifecycle Step**: [1 Discover](/category/discover/index.md) * **Pairs with**: [Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)](/okf/protocols/a2a.md), [AGENTS.md](/okf/protocols/agents-md.md), [llms.txt](/okf/protocols/llms-txt.md), [Model Context Protocol](/okf/protocols/mcp.md), [WebMCP](/okf/protocols/webmcp.md), [x402](/okf/protocols/x402.md) * **Compared in**: [sitemap.xml vs llms.txt & ARD (classic vs agentic)](/compare/sitemap-xml-vs-llms-txt/index.md), [AGENTS.md vs agents.txt](/compare/agents-md-vs-agents-txt/index.md), [llms.txt vs agents.txt](/compare/llms-txt-vs-agents-txt/index.md), [Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) vs agents.txt](/compare/ard-vs-agents-txt/index.md) [^ref-1]: agents.txt Standard, agents.txt Standard v1.0 (Status: Draft; dated "Published 2025-10-13" on the page), checked 2026-10-29: "Status Draft This document is a work in progress and subject to change." "Authors hsolosoftworks Maintainer hsolosoftworks.com Contact contact@agents-txt.com Published 2025-10-13" "agents.txt (with companion agents.json) is a lightweight, protocol-agnostic capability declaration format that publicly announces what agent-interaction protocols and features a website supports." "agents.txt is the announcement layer. It tells an agent which protocols a site speaks." "agents.txt MUST be served at /agents.txt. agents.json SHOULD be served at /agents.json." "This is distinct from agents.txt and concerns training/indexing preferences, not agent interaction capabilities." (https://agents-txt.com/spec/) [^ref-2]: agents.txt Standard, About, checked 2026-10-29: "The agents.txt working group on GitHub." "Structural changes (new directives, schema fields, conformance shifts) require an RFC-style description in the pull request and two reviewer approvals." "It is Layer 4 of the agent-readiness stack: discovery on top of llms.txt (Layer 3), sitemap.xml (Layer 2), and robots.txt (Layer 1)." "Validate the output with the live audit tool or the audit_site MCP tool at mcp.agents-txt.com." (https://agents-txt.com/about/) [^ref-3]: agents.txt Standard, reference file /agents.txt on agents-txt.com, checked 2026-10-29: "# Standard: https://agents-txt.com" (https://agents-txt.com/agents.txt) [^ref-4]: GitHub API, agents-txt/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-05-13 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-05-13" (https://api.github.com/repos/agents-txt/agents-txt) [^ref-5]: GitHub API, agents-txt/agents-txt commits (dates in UTC), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-05-10" (https://api.github.com/repos/agents-txt/agents-txt/commits?per_page=100) [^ref-6]: Internet Archive Wayback Machine, capture index for agents-txt.com (first captures; used only to date the site), checked 2026-10-29: "20260518" (https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=agents-txt.com&output=json&limit=5) [^ref-7]: GitHub API, dennj/agents.txt repository record (created 2025-02-15 UTC; homepage agentstxt.dev), checked 2026-10-29: "2025-02-15" (https://api.github.com/repos/dennj/agents.txt) [^ref-8]: dennj/agents.txt, README.md, checked 2026-10-29: "This project encourages businesses to install an agents.txt file to enable search engines to discover their AI agents and agent services." (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dennj/agents.txt/main/README.md) [^ref-9]: Internet Archive Wayback Machine, agentstxt.dev as captured 2026-02-14 (the live domain now redirects, so the archived copy is used), checked 2026-10-29: "agents.txt v0.0.2 alpha We are building an open standard to create a decentralized, democratic Internet of Agents." (https://web.archive.org/web/20260214213231id_/https://agentstxt.dev/) [^ref-10]: Internet Archive Wayback Machine, capture index for agentstxt.dev, checked 2026-10-29: "agentstxt.dev" (https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=agentstxt.dev&output=json&limit=8) [^ref-11]: S. Dutta, AGENTS.TXT: Strict Policy File for Automated Clients, draft-srijal-agents-policy-00, 7 October 2025, checked 2026-10-29: "AGENTS.TXT: Strict Policy File for Automated Clients" "Malformed files are treated as fully restrictive to prevent unintended access." "The canonical path for the file is /agents.txt." (https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-srijal-agents-policy-00.txt) [^ref-12]: IETF Datatracker, draft-srijal-agents-policy, checked 2026-10-29: "Document Type Expired Internet-Draft (individual)" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-srijal-agents-policy/) [^ref-13]: K. Cardillo, AGENTS.TXT: Capability Declarations for Web Agents, draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown-00, 12 June 2026, checked 2026-10-29: "This document requests registration of two Well-Known URIs under the "/.well-known/" path: "agents.txt" and "agents.json"." "The "agents.txt" file MUST be served at: https://example.com/.well-known/agents.txt" (https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown-00.txt) [^ref-14]: IETF Datatracker, draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown, checked 2026-10-29: "Document Type Active Internet-Draft (individual) Author Kayla Cardillo" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown/) [^ref-15]: GitHub API, kaylacar/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-02-22 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-02-22" (https://api.github.com/repos/kaylacar/agents-txt) [^ref-16]: IANA, Well-Known URIs registry (CSV), checked 2026-10-29: "URI Suffix,Reference,Status,Change Controller" (https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris-1.csv) [^ref-17]: IETF Datatracker API, Internet-Drafts whose name contains "agents", checked 2026-10-29: "draft-car-agents-txt-wellknown" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/api/v1/doc/document/?name__contains=agents&type=draft&format=json&limit=200) [^ref-18]: Jasper van Veen, DEV Community, agent-manifest.txt — a proposed web standard for AI agents (formerly agents.txt), posted 2026-03-13, edited 2026-03-27, checked 2026-10-29: "This proposal has been renamed from agents.txt to agent-manifest.txt." "the agents.txt namespace became crowded: an independent IETF Internet-Draft (draft-srijal-agents-policy-00) had already claimed that filename, and multiple community projects were independently using it for different purposes." (https://dev.to/jaspervanveen/agentstxt-a-proposed-web-standard-for-ai-agents-20lb) [^ref-19]: GitHub API, jaspervanveen/agents-brief.txt repository record (created 2026-03-09 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-03-09" (https://api.github.com/repos/jaspervanveen/agents-brief.txt) [^ref-20]: AsturWebs, /agents.txt on asturwebs.es, checked 2026-10-29: "# Version: 2.0 # Author: Pedro Luis Cuevas Villarrubia" (https://asturwebs.es/agents.txt) [^ref-21]: GitHub API, asturwebs/agents-txt repository record (created 2026-05-12 UTC), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-05-12" (https://api.github.com/repos/asturwebs/agents-txt) [^ref-22]: Eranga Bandara and 20 other authors, Towards an Agent-First Web: Redesigning the Web for AI Agents, arXiv:2606.19116, submitted 2026-06-17, checked 2026-10-29: "Towards an Agent-First Web: Redesigning the Web for AI Agents" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19116) [^ref-23]: Same paper, HTML version (v1), section 4.6 "A New agents.txt Standard", checked 2026-10-29: "We propose agents.txt, a structured declaration file served at a well-known URL (/.well-known/agents.txt)" (https://arxiv.org/html/2606.19116v1) [^ref-24]: Lago, /agents.txt on getlago.com, checked 2026-10-29: "# Standard: https://agents-txt.com" (https://getlago.com/agents.txt) [^ref-25]: pg.ddx.io, /agents.txt, checked 2026-10-29: "# Standard: https://agents-txt.com" (https://pg.ddx.io/agents.txt) [^ref-26]: General Informatics, /agents.txt on www.general-informatics.com, checked 2026-10-29: "# Standard: https://agents-txt.com" (https://www.general-informatics.com/agents.txt) [^ref-27]: DFX Intel, /agents.txt on dfxintel.com, checked 2026-10-29: "# Standard: https://agents-txt.com" (https://dfxintel.com/agents.txt) [^ref-28]: Algis Dumbris, MCPProxy Blog, The agents.txt Draft Just Expired, 2026-04-10, checked 2026-10-29: "Today, April 10, 2026, draft-srijal-agents-policy-00 quietly expired." (https://mcpproxy.app/blog/2026-04-10-agents-txt-expired/) [^ref-29]: Kelson, K-Squared Ramblings, New agents.txt file found on DreamHost, 2026-05-13, checked 2026-10-29: "This morning I discovered that a new file had been added, agents.txt, to the root of each site, on May 7." "The first agents.txt spec I found used a completely different syntax and a completely different purpose." (https://journal.kvibber.com/2026/05/agents-txt-on-dreamhost/) [^ref-30]: kvibber.com, /agents.txt (a DreamHost-hosted site), checked 2026-10-29: "Allow-Training: no Allow-RAG: yes Allow-Actions: no" (https://kvibber.com/agents.txt) [^ref-31]: Jacob Campbell, BuiltToWinWeb, Agent Discovery Files Explained, 2026-10-05, checked 2026-10-29: "/agents.txt: a newer, less settled convention for stating, in plain text, what agents may do on a site and where its agent interfaces are. There are competing drafts; treat it as a human-readable pointer file rather than a contract." (https://built2winweb.com/blog/agent-discovery-files/)