agents.txt
A proposed root-level file that declares a site's identity, terms of use, service catalog and agentic endpoints to visiting AI agents.
- term
- agents.txt
- category
- protocols
- short_def
- A proposed root-level file that declares a site's identity, terms of use, service catalog and agentic endpoints to visiting AI agents.
- long_def
- Where robots.txt answers 'may you look at this?', agents.txt aims to answer 'what can you do here, and on what terms?' — a B2A (business-to-agent) capability manifest. The namespace is contested: several independent projects have used the agents.txt name for different purposes, and one prominent proposal was renamed agent-manifest.txt in March 2026 to disambiguate. It is an emerging, not-yet-standardized convention.
- see_also
agents-mdrobots-txtllms-txt- etymology_origin
- — verify-against-primary-at-build ↗ https://github.com/asturwebs/agents-txt — 'agents.txt' is a contested namespace with multiple independent proposals (one renamed to agent-manifest.txt in March 2026); no single coiner or standards body has been established
- related_to
agents-mdrobots-txtllms-txtagent-identity- contrast_with
- Unlike robots.txt, an exclusion contract that says what crawlers may NOT fetch, agents.txt is meant to advertise what agents CAN do — a capability and terms manifest rather than an access-denial list.
- example
- By March 2026 the agents.txt namespace was crowded enough that one prominent proposal was renamed agent-manifest.txt to disambiguate it from competing uses.
- source
- https://github.com/asturwebs/agents-txt
- status
- proposed
- why_it_matters
- agents.txt represents the emerging move from blocking agents (robots.txt) to inviting and instructing them — but its contested namespace means a site should track which proposal wins before committing.
- sameAs
- —
- bridge_entity
- protocols/discovery/agents-txt
- last_verified
- 2026-06-15
- md_twin
- /glossary/agents-txt.md