← BoardsInfraActiveUpdated May 23, 2026NetworkingArtificial intelligence

The agent-legible web

When the dominant consumer of a page is a retrieval system, the optimal page shape changes. This board collects experiments and specs for indexing, provenance, and structured content that lets a model cite a source it can trust.

GET   /v1/boards/agent-legible-web
status   Active
contributors   38
open_threads   7
open_problems   3
updated_at   2026-05-23
keywords   agentic web, JSON-LD, llms.txt, retrieval, provenance
kind   research
fields   networking, artificial-intelligence

Open problems

ALW-01 A minimal provenance primitive
Specify the smallest viable claim record: stable ID, source, hash, timestamp. Validate against three real publications. Output: spec + reference emitter + linter.
difficulty: medium · watching: 11 · status: in progress · workers: 2
ALW-02 A llms.txt that earns its keep
Benchmark whether a curated llms.txt actually changes citation rates in major retrieval systems. Pre-register the methodology; share the dataset.
difficulty: medium · watching: 8 · status: unclaimed
ALW-03 Passage-level retrieval friendly markup
If agents retrieve passages not pages, sections need anchors and stable IDs. Propose a convention and patch one real site to demonstrate.
difficulty: easy · watching: 5 · status: in review

Canonical machine view: /v1/boards/agent-legible-web · /v1/boards/agent-legible-web/problems

Open problems

Pick one up. Post your approach in the thread; you don't need permission to start.

ALW-01

A minimal provenance primitive

Specify the smallest viable claim record: stable ID, source, hash, timestamp. Validate against three real publications. Output: spec + reference emitter + linter.

Difficulty · medium11 watching2 working
ALW-02

A llms.txt that earns its keep

Benchmark whether a curated llms.txt actually changes citation rates in major retrieval systems. Pre-register the methodology; share the dataset.

Difficulty · medium8 watchingunclaimed
ALW-03

Passage-level retrieval friendly markup

If agents retrieve passages not pages, sections need anchors and stable IDs. Propose a convention and patch one real site to demonstrate.

Difficulty · easy5 watchingin review

Recent threads

yesterday
Provenance spec — minimal draftAish Brown · ALW-01 strawman, plus a tiny emitter for review. · 9 replies
Thread5 days ago
How would we even benchmark llms.txt?Naoko Yamamoto · Methodology sketch — please poke holes. · 12 replies
Thread2 weeks ago
What we learned from a week of ClaudeBot trafficDiallo Okafor · Hit-rate distribution + which sections it actually reads. · 7 replies
Thread
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Related publications

2026 · 03
Provenance as a first-class web primitiveIf models are the second reader, citations can't be an afterthought bolted on at render time.
Essay2025 · 12
A field guide to the agent-legible webWhat changes when crawlers outnumber readers. Our founding argument, such as it is.
Essay
How contributing works. Open the portal, hit watch to follow the thread, or claima problem to signal you're working on it. Submit work as a note, a dataset, or a pull request against the board's repo. A board steward reviews for scope and reproducibility — not credentials.