NewFastlook now supports Google AI Overviews & Perplexity citations.Explore resources
Free scan · 15 checks · no sign-up

Is your site agent-ready?

Grade how well AI agents and answer engines can discover, read and act on your site. Get a 0–100 score and a prioritized fix list in seconds.

Try:

The readiness layer behind citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity & Google AI Overviews.

The short answer

What does “agent-ready” mean?

Agent-readiness measures how easily AI agents and answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews — can discover, read, and act on your website. A site scores well when its content is crawlable, machine-readable (Markdown, llms.txt, JSON-LD structured data), and exposes standardized discovery files (robots.txt, an XML sitemap, and /.well-known metadata). The higher your agent-readiness score, the more likely AI engines are to find, trust, and cite you.

  • Scored 0–100 across four weighted categories.
  • Four levels: Not Ready → Basic → Emerging → Agent-Ready.
  • Grades robots.txt, sitemaps, Markdown-for-Agents, llms.txt, .well-known discovery, MCP and auth.md.
  • Free, instant, and needs no sign-up.
The rubric

What the scan grades

Four categories across 15 emerging standards — weighted by how much each affects an AI agent's ability to use your site.

Can agents find you

Discoverability

robots.txt, a valid XML sitemap, and RFC 8288 Link headers so agents can find your content.

Can agents read you

Content

Markdown-for-Agents content negotiation, llms.txt, and JSON-LD structured data for clean machine reading.

Do you govern AI access

Bot Access Control

Explicit AI-bot rules and Content Signals in robots.txt to declare how AI may use your content.

Can agents act with you

API, Auth, MCP & Skills

api-catalog, OAuth metadata, auth.md, MCP server card and Agent Skills discovery for programmatic access.

Scoring

How the agent-readiness score works

Every check passes, warns or fails; the weighted total becomes a 0–100 score and a level from 0 to 3. The four categories are graded equally, so fixing any one area moves your score.

0–24

Level 0 · Not Ready

Agents can't reliably discover or read your site.

25–49

Level 1 · Basic

Web basics exist, but agent-specific signals are missing.

50–74

Level 2 · Emerging

Several agent standards are in place; gaps remain.

75–100

Level 3 · Agent-Ready

Agents can find, read, and act on your site.

Playbook

How to improve your agent-readiness score

Work top-down — Discoverability first, then Content, Bot Access and API/MCP. Or let Fastlook implement every step for you.

  1. 1

    Publish robots.txt and a valid XML sitemap

    Serve /robots.txt with crawl rules and a Sitemap: directive, plus /sitemap.xml (real application/xml, not an HTML soft-404) listing your canonical URLs.

  2. 2

    Add RFC 8288 Link headers

    Point agents to /.well-known/api-catalog, /llms.txt and your sitemap using Link response headers on your key pages.

  3. 3

    Serve llms.txt

    Publish /llms.txt summarising your most important content and links so LLMs can ingest you efficiently.

  4. 4

    Enable Markdown for Agents

    Return text/markdown when a client sends Accept: text/markdown, while keeping HTML the default for browsers.

  5. 5

    Add JSON-LD structured data

    Emit Organization, WebSite, FAQPage and Article schema so engines can parse your entity, authors and dates.

  6. 6

    Govern AI bots in robots.txt

    Add User-agent groups for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, plus Content-Signal directives declaring AI usage.

  7. 7

    Publish .well-known discovery

    Serve api-catalog, an MCP server card, an Agent Skills index and auth.md so agents can discover and act with you.

Learn more

Related AEO & GEO guides

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI agent-readiness score?

It measures how easily AI agents and answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews) can discover, read, and act on your website. Our free checker scores 0–100 across four areas — Discoverability, Content, Bot Access Control, and API/Auth/MCP/Skills — based on emerging standards like robots.txt, sitemaps, Markdown negotiation, llms.txt and the .well-known discovery files.

What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?

AEO is optimizing your content and site so AI answer engines cite you directly in their responses, rather than just ranking you in a list of blue links. It combines structured, extractable content with machine-readable discovery signals so an LLM can find, trust and quote your pages.

What's the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?

SEO optimizes for classic search rankings. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO optimize for being surfaced and cited inside AI-generated answers. They overlap — good structure and crawlability help all three — but AEO/GEO add machine-readability (llms.txt, Markdown negotiation, schema, .well-known discovery) that traditional SEO ignores.

How is my agent-readiness score calculated?

We fetch your site and run weighted checks: robots.txt and sitemap validity, Link headers, Markdown content negotiation, llms.txt, JSON-LD structured data, AI-bot rules and Content Signals in robots.txt, and the .well-known files (api-catalog, OAuth metadata, auth.md, MCP server card, Agent Skills index). Each check passes, warns or fails; the weighted total becomes your 0–100 score and Level 0–3.

What is llms.txt and do I need it?

llms.txt is a plain-text/Markdown file at your site root that summarizes your key content and links for large language models — like robots.txt, but for LLMs. It helps AI systems ingest your most important pages efficiently. It's quickly becoming a baseline agent-readiness signal, so yes, most sites should publish one.

What is Markdown for Agents (content negotiation)?

It means returning a clean Markdown version of a page when a client sends the header Accept: text/markdown, while still serving HTML to browsers. Agents parse Markdown far more reliably than rendered HTML, so supporting it makes your content dramatically easier for LLMs to read and quote accurately.

What are the .well-known agent files?

Standardized JSON/Markdown documents under /.well-known/ that let agents discover your capabilities: api-catalog (RFC 9727) lists your APIs, mcp/server-card.json advertises an MCP server, agent-skills/index.json lists agent skills, and the OAuth metadata files describe authentication. Serving these lets agents interact with your site programmatically.

What is auth.md and agent registration?

auth.md is a Markdown file at your site root that tells agents how to authenticate and register for your APIs, paired with an agent_auth block in /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server. It's the emerging convention (from WorkOS) for letting AI agents securely obtain scoped credentials without a human filling in a sign-up form.

What is MCP and an MCP server card?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for exposing tools and data to AI models. An MCP server card at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json advertises your server's name, transport endpoint and capabilities so agents can discover and connect to your tools automatically.

How do I control which AI bots can access my site?

Add explicit User-agent groups in robots.txt for crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and CCBot, and layer on Content-Signal directives to declare preferences for AI training, search and AI input. Our checker flags whether you've declared any preference at all.

What are Content Signals in robots.txt?

Content Signals are directives (e.g. Content-Signal: ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=no) that declare how AI systems may use your content. They give you granular control beyond simple allow/disallow, separating training from search from answer-generation use.

Why does my sitemap show a soft-404?

A soft-404 is when /sitemap.xml returns HTTP 200 but serves an HTML page (usually your app shell) instead of real XML — so crawlers and agents can't parse it. Fix it by generating a valid /sitemap.xml with the correct application/xml content type and referencing it from robots.txt.

How do I get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?

Publish answer-first, well-structured content with clear headings, FAQs and JSON-LD; make it machine-readable via Markdown negotiation and llms.txt; and ensure discovery through a valid sitemap and .well-known files. Fastlook generates AI-citable pages and implements these signals so answer engines can find, trust and quote you.

Does agent-readiness affect my Google SEO rankings?

Indirectly, yes. Valid sitemaps, structured data, fast crawlable pages and clear content help both classic Google ranking and AI answer inclusion. Agent-readiness adds machine-readability on top — so you win in traditional search and in AI answers at the same time.

How does Fastlook improve my agent-readiness score?

Fastlook implements every standard this checker grades — llms.txt, Markdown-for-Agents, .well-known discovery, MCP, auth.md and structured data — and continuously publishes AI-citable content optimized for answer engines. Run the free scan, create a free account, and we take your score toward Agent-Native.

Is the scan free?

Yes — the agent-readiness scan is completely free and needs no account. You only sign up when you want Fastlook to implement the fixes and start improving your AI visibility.

Turn your score into AI citations

Fastlook implements every agent-readiness standard and publishes AI-citable pages so you get mentioned by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

Get started free