---
type: Agentic Web Standard
title: "NLWeb"
description: "How can a site expose a natural-language question-answering interface grounded in its own Schema.org-structured content, for both humans and agents?"
resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/NLWEBSPEC.md"
tags: ["act", "endpoint", "community", "let-agents-act-on-my-site", "serve-content-to-agents", "expose-tools-to-agents"]
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://news.microsoft.com/source/features/company-news/introducing-nlweb-bringing-conversational-interfaces-directly-to-the-web/"
    title: "Microsoft Corporate Blogs, Introducing NLWeb: Bringing conversational interfaces directly to the web (Microsoft Source), 2025-05-19, checked 2026-10-29: \"Published May 19, 2025\" \"Today Microsoft is introducing NLWeb, an open project designed to simplify the creation of natural language interfaces for websites—making it easy to turn any site into an AI-powered app.\" \"NLWeb was conceived and developed by R.V. Guha, who recently joined Microsoft as CVP and Technical Fellow. Guha is the creator of widely used web standards such as RSS, RDF and Schema.org.\" \"Every NLWeb instance is also a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, allowing websites to make their content discoverable and accessible to agents and other participants in the MCP ecosystem if they choose.\" \"NLWeb leverages semi-structured formats like Schema.org, RSS and other data that websites already publish, combining them with LLM-powered tools to create natural language interfaces usable by both humans and AI agents.\" \"We've worked with a small cohort of early adopters to test and refine our approach to NLWeb and ensure it meets the needs of modern web publishers.\" \"Initial publishing and ecosystem collaborators include: Chicago Public Media Common Sense Media DDM (Allrecipes/Serious Eats) Eventbrite Hearst (Delish) Inception Labs Milvus O'Reilly Media Qdrant Shopify Snowflake Tripadvisor\""
    last_modified: 2025-05-19T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-2
    resource: "https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/05/19/microsoft-build-2025-the-age-of-ai-agents-and-building-the-open-agentic-web/"
    title: "Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft Build 2025: The age of AI agents and building the open agentic web (The Official Microsoft Blog), 2025-05-19, checked 2026-10-29: \"Microsoft is introducing NLWeb, which we believe can play a similar role to HTML for the agentic web.\" \"Every NLWeb endpoint is also an MCP server, so websites can make their content easily discoverable and accessible to AI agents if they choose.\""
    last_modified: 2025-05-19T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-3
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/README.md"
    title: "nlweb-ai/NLWeb, README.md (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: \"NLWeb is a collection of open protocols and associated open source tools.\" \"NLWeb provides practical implementation code—not as the definitive solution, but as proof-of-concept demonstrations showing one possible approach.\" \"Every NLWeb instance also acts as an MCP server (and soon A2A) and supports a core method, ask, which allows a natural language question to be posed to a website.\" \"The response returned uses Schema.org — a widely adopted vocabulary for describing web data.\" \"In short, NLWeb is to MCP/A2A what HTML is to HTTP.\" \"A simple protocol to interact with a site using natural language. It returns responses in JSON using Schema.org. See the NLWeb spec for details.\" \"For questions about this GitHub project, please contact NLWeb Support.\" \"NLWeb uses the MIT License.\""
  - id: ref-4
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/docs/nlweb-rest-api.md"
    title: "nlweb-ai/NLWeb, docs/nlweb-rest-api.md, NLWeb Rest API (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: \"At this point, NLWeb supports 2 APIs at the endpoints /ask and /mcp. The arguments are the same for both, as is most of the functionality. The /mcp endpoint returns the answers in format that MCP clients can use. The /mcp endpoint also supports the core MCP methods (list_tools, list_prompts, call_tool and get_prompt).\" \"The required argument to ask / mcp is: query: The current query in natural language\""
  - id: ref-5
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/LICENSE"
    title: "nlweb-ai/NLWeb, LICENSE (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: \"MIT License Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.\""
  - id: ref-6
    resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb"
    title: "GitHub REST API, repository record for nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON), checked 2026-10-29: \"\"full_name\": \"nlweb-ai/NLWeb\"\" \"\"created_at\": \"2025-04-28T20:44:02Z\"\" \"\"spdx_id\": \"MIT\"\""
    last_modified: 2025-04-28T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-7
    resource: "https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/wiki/We've-moved-to-our-new-home!"
    title: "nlweb-ai/NLWeb wiki, We've moved to our new home! (GitHub), last edited 2025-07-30, checked 2026-10-29: \"We've migrated the repository from microsoft/NLWeb to our new independent GitHub organization at NLWeb-ai.\" \"A neutral space where contributors from any company or background can collaborate\" \"Chelsea edited this page Jul 30, 2025\""
    last_modified: 2025-07-30T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-8
    resource: "https://www.w3.org/community/nlweb/"
    title: "W3C, NLWeb Community Group, checked 2026-10-29: \"Posted on: October 20, 2025 The NLWeb Community Group has been launched:\" \"This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2025-10-16 by Ramanathan Guha.\" \"W3C's hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.\" \"Chairs None yet\""
    last_modified: 2025-10-20T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-9
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/NLWEBSPEC.md"
    title: "nlweb-ai/website, NLWEBSPEC.md, NLWeb Specification v0.55 (GitHub; source of the nlweb.ai site), checked 2026-10-29: \"NLWeb Specification v0.55\" \"NLWeb is designed to be transport-protocol agnostic.\" \"The request object consists of four sections: query, context, prefer, and meta.\" \"POST /ask — Submit a natural language query. POST /await — Check on or cancel a promised result.\" \"These attributes, and their values, should use schema.org vocabulary or comparable schemas where possible.\" \"NLWeb operations can be exposed as Tools within the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or other JSON-RPC-based agentic standards.\" \"Authentication and authorization are handled at the transport layer and are outside the scope of this specification.\" \"NLWeb responses are always JSON objects with a required metadata field (_meta) and one or more content fields whose structure depends on the response type.\""
    last_modified: 2026-03-23T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-10
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/README.md"
    title: "nlweb-ai/website, README.md, NLWeb.ai Website (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: \"The official documentation website for NLWeb - a protocol that simplifies building conversational interfaces for websites and enables natural language interactions with AI agents.\""
  - id: ref-11
    resource: "https://blog.cloudflare.com/conversational-search-with-nlweb-and-autorag/"
    title: "Catarina Pires Mota, Gabriel Massadas, Nelson Duarte, Daniel Leal and Anni Wang, Make Your Website Conversational for People and Agents with NLWeb and AutoRAG (Cloudflare Blog), 2025-08-28, checked 2026-10-29: \"August 28, 2025 Make Your Website Conversational for People and Agents with NLWeb and AutoRAG\" \"NLWeb is an open project developed by Microsoft that defines a standard protocol for natural-language queries on websites. Each NLWeb instance also operates as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.\" \"Cloudflare is building to this spec and actively working with Microsoft to extend the standard with the goal to let every site function like an AI app, so users and agents alike can query its contents naturally.\""
    last_modified: 2025-08-28T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-12
    resource: "https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/how-to/nlweb/index.md"
    title: "Cloudflare, NLWeb, Cloudflare AI Search docs (Markdown version), last updated 2026-07-10, checked 2026-10-29: \"Last updated Jul 10, 2026\" \"Enable conversational search on your website with NLWeb and Cloudflare AI Search. This template crawls your site, indexes the content, and deploys NLWeb-standard endpoints to serve both people and AI agents.\" \"This is a public preview ideal for experimentation.\" \"/mcp: NLWeb's MCP server endpoint for trusted AI agents\""
    last_modified: 2026-07-10T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-13
    resource: "https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/engineering/natural-language-interfaces-with-nlweb-and-snowflake/"
    title: "David Taylor, Powering Natural Language Interfaces for the Web with NLWeb and Snowflake (Snowflake Engineering Blog), 2025-05-20, checked 2026-10-29: \"May 20, 2025\" \"Today we're excited to announce Snowflake's integration with NLWeb, an open-source project from Microsoft that enables developers to build natural language interfaces over website content using structured data and modular, pluggable AI components.\""
    last_modified: 2025-05-20T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-14
    resource: "https://yoast.com/press/yoast-nlweb-microsoft-251125/"
    title: "Yoast, Yoast collaborates with Microsoft to help AI understand Open Web (press release), 2025-11-25, checked 2026-10-29: \"Published on Nov 25, 2025\" \"Yoast today announced a new collaboration with NLWeb, the open framework developed by Microsoft that is designed to make the web readable and usable by AI systems.\" \"Yoast's integration with NLWeb will begin rolling out in phases, starting with functionality that helps Yoast customers using WordPress express their content in ways AI systems can interpret accurately, without any additional setup or new tools required.\""
    last_modified: 2025-11-25T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-15
    resource: "https://support.wix.com/en/article/enabling-nlweb-for-ai-agent-access"
    title: "Wix Help Center, Enabling NLWeb for AI Agent Access, undated, checked 2026-10-29: \"NLWeb (Natural Language Web) is an open-source framework from Microsoft that makes your website directly queryable by both people and AI agents.\" \"Use the following MCP URL to connect to your favorite AI agent (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT or custom agents): https://www.[your-domain.com]/_api/nlweb/mcp.\""
  - id: ref-16
    resource: "https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/introducing-knowledge-assistant-trusted-ai-answers-powered-by-nlweb/"
    title: "Mark van Berkel, Introducing Knowledge Assistant: Trusted AI Answers Powered by NLWeb (Schema App), 2026-06-30, checked 2026-10-29: \"NLWeb serves as the underlying technology and infrastructure: retrieval, synthesis, citation, and deployment surfaces.\""
    last_modified: 2026-06-30T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-17
    resource: "https://www.tnlmediagene.com/news/announce/699"
    title: "TNL Mediagene, TNL Mediagene Introduces NLWeb Support to Strengthen Its Digital Media as AI-Native Content Infrastructure for the AI-Driven Web, 2026-01-06, checked 2026-10-29: \"2026/01/06 TNL Mediagene\" \"The Company has introduced Natural Language Web (\"NLWeb\") support to its digital media assets, enhancing how its content interfaces with the AI ecosystem and facilitating AI monetization opportunities\""
    last_modified: 2026-01-06T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-18
    resource: "https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/nlweb-pioneer-qa-tripadvisor/4415289"
    title: "Microsoft Tech Community, Microsoft NLWeb Pioneer - Tripadvisor, checked 2026-10-29: \"We quickly integrated the NLWeb API into our frontend UI, and on the backend, we connected it to our existing vector database (Qdrant) with minimal changes.\""
  - id: ref-19
    resource: "https://agentcommunity.org/docs/nlweb"
    title: "Agent Community, NLWeb Documentation Answers (Agent Community Docs), checked 2026-10-29: \"/ask is a public-documentation answer endpoint. It uses the same deterministic extractive retrieval as the Documentation MCP: it does not call an LLM, and it returns an answer assembled from published documentation with Schema.org Article citations.\""
  - id: ref-20
    resource: "https://www.worldmonitor.app/agents.md"
    title: "World Monitor, World Monitor agent guide (agents.md), checked 2026-10-29: \"NLWeb: POST https://www.worldmonitor.app/ask (supports SSE) for natural-language questions\""
  - id: ref-21
    resource: "https://www.sdi-protocol.org/llms.txt"
    title: "SDI, llms.txt (sdi-protocol.org), checked 2026-10-29: \"use the NLWeb MCP endpoint: https://www.sdi-protocol.org/_api/nlweb/mcp This is an open Microsoft protocol, model-agnostic, connectable by any MCP-capable agent or client.\""
  - id: ref-22
    resource: "https://www.techradar.com/pro/could-microsoft-kill-the-web-browser-at-build-everything-developers-need-to-know-about-the-nlweb-protocol"
    title: "Ritoban Mukherjee, Could Microsoft kill the web browser at Build? Everything developers need to know about the NLWeb Protocol (TechRadar), 2026-05-29, checked 2026-10-29: \"But more importantly, NLWeb blurs the boundary between a website and an API. Running an NLWeb endpoint means your site becomes queryable by external AI agents, not just human visitors with a browser, which raises governance questions about which agents can access your content, at what rate, and on what terms.\""
    last_modified: 2026-05-29T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-23
    resource: "https://presenc.ai/research/nlweb-adoption-2026"
    title: "Ramanath, NLWeb Adoption 2026: Status, Adopters, and How It Fits With MCP (Presenc AI), 2026-09-21, checked 2026-10-29: \"No public count of NLWeb deployments exists. Unlike llms.txt, which lives at a fixed URL and can be counted by crawling (see the state of llms.txt), NLWeb endpoints have no single standard location.\" \"Any \"X thousand sites\" figure you see is an estimate.\""
    last_modified: 2026-09-21T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-24
    resource: "https://www.safeguard.sh/resources/blog/nlweb-explained-natural-language-endpoints-for-websites-mcp-and-how-to-secure-them"
    title: "Safeguard Security Team, NLWeb Explained: Natural Language Endpoints, MCP and How to Secure Them (Safeguard Blog), 2026-10-24, checked 2026-10-29: \"Patch it like any Python service. Several requirements.txt files, no published advisories, and release notes that record security fixes.\" \"A release note in docs/release_notes lists a fix for a \"path traversal vulnerability in static file handler\" (PR #231)\" \"When we queried the repository's GitHub security advisories on 24 October 2026, none were published.\""
    last_modified: 2026-10-24T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-25
    resource: "https://www.theverge.com/news/719617/microsoft-nlweb-security-flaw-agentic-web"
    title: "Tom Warren, Microsoft's plan to fix the web with AI has already hit an embarrassing security flaw (The Verge), 2025-08-06, checked 2026-10-29: \"Aug 6, 2025\" \"What's worse is that it's a classic path traversal flaw, meaning it's as easy to exploit as visiting a malformed URL.\""
    last_modified: 2025-08-06T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-26
    resource: "https://nlweb.fr/a-propos-de-lagence-web-nl-web/"
    title: "NL Web (French web agency), À propos de l'agence web NL Web, checked 2026-10-29: \"L'agence Web « NL Web », c'est l'histoire d'une passion pour le monde du web. Derrière ce nom, se cache un expert en développement web et applications mobiles\""
  - id: ref-27
    resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/commits?per_page=5"
    title: "GitHub REST API, latest commits on nlweb-ai/NLWeb main (JSON; field read: commit.committer.date), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-06-10\""
    last_modified: 2026-06-10T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-28
    resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/releases"
    title: "GitHub REST API, releases of nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON; empty list), checked 2026-10-29: \"[]\""
  - id: ref-29
    resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/tags"
    title: "GitHub REST API, tags of nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON; empty list), checked 2026-10-29: \"[]\""
  - id: ref-30
    resource: "https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/website/commits?path=NLWEBSPEC.md&per_page=100"
    title: "GitHub REST API, commit history of NLWEBSPEC.md in nlweb-ai/website (JSON; field read: commit.committer.date), checked 2026-10-29: \"2026-03-23\""
    last_modified: 2026-03-23T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-31
    resource: "https://pypi.org/pypi/nlweb-core/json"
    title: "PyPI, nlweb-core project record (JSON; fields read: info.version, info.project_urls, upload_time), checked 2026-10-29: \"0.7.0\" \"2026-02-19\" \"nlweb-ai/nlweb-ask-agent\""
    last_modified: 2026-02-19T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-32
    resource: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/CNAME"
    title: "nlweb-ai/website, CNAME (GitHub; contents: nlweb.ai), checked 2026-10-29: \"nlweb.ai\""
---

# NLWeb

NLWeb is an agentic-web standard (endpoint) at step 5, Act, governed by The nlweb-ai GitHub organization, with Microsoft ties still in place; its status is "Public and open to contributions". It answers: "How can a site expose a natural-language question-answering interface grounded in its own Schema.org-structured content, for both humans and agents?" Implementation status is multi-implementation (Agent Community and World Monitor), last verified 2026-10-29.

# Overview

NLWeb lets a website answer natural-language questions about its own content through a single `ask` method, returning structured results in Schema.org vocabulary, and the same method is offered to AI agents as an MCP tool [^ref-1][^ref-3][^ref-9]. It was announced by Microsoft at Build 2025 and conceived by R.V. Guha, whom Microsoft credits with RSS, RDF and Schema.org, and its repository has since moved to a separate nlweb-ai GitHub organization while staying MIT-licensed under a Microsoft copyright [^ref-1][^ref-5][^ref-7]. Rather than asking sites to rebuild their content, it reuses the Schema.org and RSS markup they already publish, combined with a vector store and a language model of the site's choice [^ref-1][^ref-3]. The project describes itself as the content layer above agent protocols, "NLWeb is to MCP/A2A what HTML is to HTTP", and offers its code as a proof of concept rather than a finished product [^ref-3].

# Examples

```http
POST {origin}/ask
# parse: a JSON response using Schema.org vocabulary answering the natural-language question in the request body proves NLWeb (or an MCP-exposed equivalent) is present; every NLWeb instance also runs as an MCP server exposing an `ask` tool/method
# on absent: connection refused, 404, or a non-Schema.org JSON shape means no NLWeb endpoint is present
```

# Knowledge Graph

* **Lifecycle Step**: [5 Act](/category/act/index.md)
* **Builds on**: [Model Context Protocol](/okf/protocols/mcp.md)
* **Pairs with**: [Model Context Protocol](/okf/protocols/mcp.md), [Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)](/okf/protocols/a2a.md), [llms.txt](/okf/protocols/llms-txt.md), [AGENTS.md](/okf/protocols/agents-md.md), [MCP Server Cards](/okf/protocols/mcp-server-cards.md), [WebMCP](/okf/protocols/webmcp.md)
* **Compared in**: [OpenAPI & REST APIs vs Model Context Protocol (MCP) (classic vs agentic)](/compare/openapi-vs-mcp/index.md), [NLWeb vs Model Context Protocol](/compare/nlweb-vs-mcp/index.md)

[^ref-1]: Microsoft Corporate Blogs, Introducing NLWeb: Bringing conversational interfaces directly to the web (Microsoft Source), 2025-05-19, checked 2026-10-29: "Published May 19, 2025" "Today Microsoft is introducing NLWeb, an open project designed to simplify the creation of natural language interfaces for websites—making it easy to turn any site into an AI-powered app." "NLWeb was conceived and developed by R.V. Guha, who recently joined Microsoft as CVP and Technical Fellow. Guha is the creator of widely used web standards such as RSS, RDF and Schema.org." "Every NLWeb instance is also a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, allowing websites to make their content discoverable and accessible to agents and other participants in the MCP ecosystem if they choose." "NLWeb leverages semi-structured formats like Schema.org, RSS and other data that websites already publish, combining them with LLM-powered tools to create natural language interfaces usable by both humans and AI agents." "We've worked with a small cohort of early adopters to test and refine our approach to NLWeb and ensure it meets the needs of modern web publishers." "Initial publishing and ecosystem collaborators include: Chicago Public Media Common Sense Media DDM (Allrecipes/Serious Eats) Eventbrite Hearst (Delish) Inception Labs Milvus O'Reilly Media Qdrant Shopify Snowflake Tripadvisor" (https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/company-news/introducing-nlweb-bringing-conversational-interfaces-directly-to-the-web/)
[^ref-2]: Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft Build 2025: The age of AI agents and building the open agentic web (The Official Microsoft Blog), 2025-05-19, checked 2026-10-29: "Microsoft is introducing NLWeb, which we believe can play a similar role to HTML for the agentic web." "Every NLWeb endpoint is also an MCP server, so websites can make their content easily discoverable and accessible to AI agents if they choose." (https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/05/19/microsoft-build-2025-the-age-of-ai-agents-and-building-the-open-agentic-web/)
[^ref-3]: nlweb-ai/NLWeb, README.md (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: "NLWeb is a collection of open protocols and associated open source tools." "NLWeb provides practical implementation code—not as the definitive solution, but as proof-of-concept demonstrations showing one possible approach." "Every NLWeb instance also acts as an MCP server (and soon A2A) and supports a core method, ask, which allows a natural language question to be posed to a website." "The response returned uses Schema.org — a widely adopted vocabulary for describing web data." "In short, NLWeb is to MCP/A2A what HTML is to HTTP." "A simple protocol to interact with a site using natural language. It returns responses in JSON using Schema.org. See the NLWeb spec for details." "For questions about this GitHub project, please contact NLWeb Support." "NLWeb uses the MIT License." (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/README.md)
[^ref-4]: nlweb-ai/NLWeb, docs/nlweb-rest-api.md, NLWeb Rest API (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: "At this point, NLWeb supports 2 APIs at the endpoints /ask and /mcp. The arguments are the same for both, as is most of the functionality. The /mcp endpoint returns the answers in format that MCP clients can use. The /mcp endpoint also supports the core MCP methods (list_tools, list_prompts, call_tool and get_prompt)." "The required argument to ask / mcp is: query: The current query in natural language" (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/docs/nlweb-rest-api.md)
[^ref-5]: nlweb-ai/NLWeb, LICENSE (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: "MIT License Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation." (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/main/LICENSE)
[^ref-6]: GitHub REST API, repository record for nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON), checked 2026-10-29: ""full_name": "nlweb-ai/NLWeb"" ""created_at": "2025-04-28T20:44:02Z"" ""spdx_id": "MIT"" (https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb)
[^ref-7]: nlweb-ai/NLWeb wiki, We've moved to our new home! (GitHub), last edited 2025-07-30, checked 2026-10-29: "We've migrated the repository from microsoft/NLWeb to our new independent GitHub organization at NLWeb-ai." "A neutral space where contributors from any company or background can collaborate" "Chelsea edited this page Jul 30, 2025" (https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/wiki/We've-moved-to-our-new-home!)
[^ref-8]: W3C, NLWeb Community Group, checked 2026-10-29: "Posted on: October 20, 2025 The NLWeb Community Group has been launched:" "This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2025-10-16 by Ramanathan Guha." "W3C's hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities." "Chairs None yet" (https://www.w3.org/community/nlweb/)
[^ref-9]: nlweb-ai/website, NLWEBSPEC.md, NLWeb Specification v0.55 (GitHub; source of the nlweb.ai site), checked 2026-10-29: "NLWeb Specification v0.55" "NLWeb is designed to be transport-protocol agnostic." "The request object consists of four sections: query, context, prefer, and meta." "POST /ask — Submit a natural language query. POST /await — Check on or cancel a promised result." "These attributes, and their values, should use schema.org vocabulary or comparable schemas where possible." "NLWeb operations can be exposed as Tools within the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or other JSON-RPC-based agentic standards." "Authentication and authorization are handled at the transport layer and are outside the scope of this specification." "NLWeb responses are always JSON objects with a required metadata field (_meta) and one or more content fields whose structure depends on the response type." (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/NLWEBSPEC.md)
[^ref-10]: nlweb-ai/website, README.md, NLWeb.ai Website (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: "The official documentation website for NLWeb - a protocol that simplifies building conversational interfaces for websites and enables natural language interactions with AI agents." (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/README.md)
[^ref-11]: Catarina Pires Mota, Gabriel Massadas, Nelson Duarte, Daniel Leal and Anni Wang, Make Your Website Conversational for People and Agents with NLWeb and AutoRAG (Cloudflare Blog), 2025-08-28, checked 2026-10-29: "August 28, 2025 Make Your Website Conversational for People and Agents with NLWeb and AutoRAG" "NLWeb is an open project developed by Microsoft that defines a standard protocol for natural-language queries on websites. Each NLWeb instance also operates as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server." "Cloudflare is building to this spec and actively working with Microsoft to extend the standard with the goal to let every site function like an AI app, so users and agents alike can query its contents naturally." (https://blog.cloudflare.com/conversational-search-with-nlweb-and-autorag/)
[^ref-12]: Cloudflare, NLWeb, Cloudflare AI Search docs (Markdown version), last updated 2026-07-10, checked 2026-10-29: "Last updated Jul 10, 2026" "Enable conversational search on your website with NLWeb and Cloudflare AI Search. This template crawls your site, indexes the content, and deploys NLWeb-standard endpoints to serve both people and AI agents." "This is a public preview ideal for experimentation." "/mcp: NLWeb's MCP server endpoint for trusted AI agents" (https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/how-to/nlweb/index.md)
[^ref-13]: David Taylor, Powering Natural Language Interfaces for the Web with NLWeb and Snowflake (Snowflake Engineering Blog), 2025-05-20, checked 2026-10-29: "May 20, 2025" "Today we're excited to announce Snowflake's integration with NLWeb, an open-source project from Microsoft that enables developers to build natural language interfaces over website content using structured data and modular, pluggable AI components." (https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/engineering/natural-language-interfaces-with-nlweb-and-snowflake/)
[^ref-14]: Yoast, Yoast collaborates with Microsoft to help AI understand Open Web (press release), 2025-11-25, checked 2026-10-29: "Published on Nov 25, 2025" "Yoast today announced a new collaboration with NLWeb, the open framework developed by Microsoft that is designed to make the web readable and usable by AI systems." "Yoast's integration with NLWeb will begin rolling out in phases, starting with functionality that helps Yoast customers using WordPress express their content in ways AI systems can interpret accurately, without any additional setup or new tools required." (https://yoast.com/press/yoast-nlweb-microsoft-251125/)
[^ref-15]: Wix Help Center, Enabling NLWeb for AI Agent Access, undated, checked 2026-10-29: "NLWeb (Natural Language Web) is an open-source framework from Microsoft that makes your website directly queryable by both people and AI agents." "Use the following MCP URL to connect to your favorite AI agent (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT or custom agents): https://www.[your-domain.com]/_api/nlweb/mcp." (https://support.wix.com/en/article/enabling-nlweb-for-ai-agent-access)
[^ref-16]: Mark van Berkel, Introducing Knowledge Assistant: Trusted AI Answers Powered by NLWeb (Schema App), 2026-06-30, checked 2026-10-29: "NLWeb serves as the underlying technology and infrastructure: retrieval, synthesis, citation, and deployment surfaces." (https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/introducing-knowledge-assistant-trusted-ai-answers-powered-by-nlweb/)
[^ref-17]: TNL Mediagene, TNL Mediagene Introduces NLWeb Support to Strengthen Its Digital Media as AI-Native Content Infrastructure for the AI-Driven Web, 2026-01-06, checked 2026-10-29: "2026/01/06 TNL Mediagene" "The Company has introduced Natural Language Web ("NLWeb") support to its digital media assets, enhancing how its content interfaces with the AI ecosystem and facilitating AI monetization opportunities" (https://www.tnlmediagene.com/news/announce/699)
[^ref-18]: Microsoft Tech Community, Microsoft NLWeb Pioneer - Tripadvisor, checked 2026-10-29: "We quickly integrated the NLWeb API into our frontend UI, and on the backend, we connected it to our existing vector database (Qdrant) with minimal changes." (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/nlweb-pioneer-qa-tripadvisor/4415289)
[^ref-19]: Agent Community, NLWeb Documentation Answers (Agent Community Docs), checked 2026-10-29: "/ask is a public-documentation answer endpoint. It uses the same deterministic extractive retrieval as the Documentation MCP: it does not call an LLM, and it returns an answer assembled from published documentation with Schema.org Article citations." (https://agentcommunity.org/docs/nlweb)
[^ref-20]: World Monitor, World Monitor agent guide (agents.md), checked 2026-10-29: "NLWeb: POST https://www.worldmonitor.app/ask (supports SSE) for natural-language questions" (https://www.worldmonitor.app/agents.md)
[^ref-21]: SDI, llms.txt (sdi-protocol.org), checked 2026-10-29: "use the NLWeb MCP endpoint: https://www.sdi-protocol.org/_api/nlweb/mcp This is an open Microsoft protocol, model-agnostic, connectable by any MCP-capable agent or client." (https://www.sdi-protocol.org/llms.txt)
[^ref-22]: Ritoban Mukherjee, Could Microsoft kill the web browser at Build? Everything developers need to know about the NLWeb Protocol (TechRadar), 2026-05-29, checked 2026-10-29: "But more importantly, NLWeb blurs the boundary between a website and an API. Running an NLWeb endpoint means your site becomes queryable by external AI agents, not just human visitors with a browser, which raises governance questions about which agents can access your content, at what rate, and on what terms." (https://www.techradar.com/pro/could-microsoft-kill-the-web-browser-at-build-everything-developers-need-to-know-about-the-nlweb-protocol)
[^ref-23]: Ramanath, NLWeb Adoption 2026: Status, Adopters, and How It Fits With MCP (Presenc AI), 2026-09-21, checked 2026-10-29: "No public count of NLWeb deployments exists. Unlike llms.txt, which lives at a fixed URL and can be counted by crawling (see the state of llms.txt), NLWeb endpoints have no single standard location." "Any "X thousand sites" figure you see is an estimate." (https://presenc.ai/research/nlweb-adoption-2026)
[^ref-24]: Safeguard Security Team, NLWeb Explained: Natural Language Endpoints, MCP and How to Secure Them (Safeguard Blog), 2026-10-24, checked 2026-10-29: "Patch it like any Python service. Several requirements.txt files, no published advisories, and release notes that record security fixes." "A release note in docs/release_notes lists a fix for a "path traversal vulnerability in static file handler" (PR #231)" "When we queried the repository's GitHub security advisories on 24 October 2026, none were published." (https://www.safeguard.sh/resources/blog/nlweb-explained-natural-language-endpoints-for-websites-mcp-and-how-to-secure-them)
[^ref-25]: Tom Warren, Microsoft's plan to fix the web with AI has already hit an embarrassing security flaw (The Verge), 2025-08-06, checked 2026-10-29: "Aug 6, 2025" "What's worse is that it's a classic path traversal flaw, meaning it's as easy to exploit as visiting a malformed URL." (https://www.theverge.com/news/719617/microsoft-nlweb-security-flaw-agentic-web)
[^ref-26]: NL Web (French web agency), À propos de l'agence web NL Web, checked 2026-10-29: "L'agence Web « NL Web », c'est l'histoire d'une passion pour le monde du web. Derrière ce nom, se cache un expert en développement web et applications mobiles" (https://nlweb.fr/a-propos-de-lagence-web-nl-web/)
[^ref-27]: GitHub REST API, latest commits on nlweb-ai/NLWeb main (JSON; field read: commit.committer.date), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-06-10" (https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/commits?per_page=5)
[^ref-28]: GitHub REST API, releases of nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON; empty list), checked 2026-10-29: "[]" (https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/releases)
[^ref-29]: GitHub REST API, tags of nlweb-ai/NLWeb (JSON; empty list), checked 2026-10-29: "[]" (https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/tags)
[^ref-30]: GitHub REST API, commit history of NLWEBSPEC.md in nlweb-ai/website (JSON; field read: commit.committer.date), checked 2026-10-29: "2026-03-23" (https://api.github.com/repos/nlweb-ai/website/commits?path=NLWEBSPEC.md&per_page=100)
[^ref-31]: PyPI, nlweb-core project record (JSON; fields read: info.version, info.project_urls, upload_time), checked 2026-10-29: "0.7.0" "2026-02-19" "nlweb-ai/nlweb-ask-agent" (https://pypi.org/pypi/nlweb-core/json)
[^ref-32]: nlweb-ai/website, CNAME (GitHub; contents: nlweb.ai), checked 2026-10-29: "nlweb.ai" (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nlweb-ai/website/main/CNAME)