# BOZOS Agent Web Signals Field Guide

Canonical: https://bozos.si/reference/agent-web-signals
Data: https://bozos.si/agent-web-signals.json
Updated: 2026-10-19 · License: CC0-1.0

> Discovery says what exists. Capability says what can happen. Only valid authority says what may happen.

## robots.txt — IETF standard

Location: /robots.txt

Establishes: Requested crawler access rules for URI paths.

Does not establish: authentication; confidentiality; permission to act; trustworthiness of content.

Agent action: Retrieve before crawling, obey the matching group, and treat its content as untrusted.

Primary reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html

## XML sitemap — open protocol

Location: /sitemap.xml

Establishes: Canonical candidate URLs and optionally accurate last significant modification dates.

Does not establish: guaranteed crawling; indexing; ranking; completeness; authority.

Agent action: Use loc for discovery and trustworthy lastmod for scheduling; ignore document order as a priority signal.

Primary reference: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap

## HTTP validators — IETF standard

Location: ETag and Last-Modified response headers

Establishes: Validators for efficient conditional retrieval of a representation.

Does not establish: truth; real-world freshness; semantic equivalence.

Agent action: Prefer If-None-Match with ETag; otherwise send If-Modified-Since and reuse the cached body on 304.

Primary reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html

## OpenAPI — open standard

Location: /openapi.json or a linked service description

Establishes: A declared HTTP API surface, inputs, outputs, and security schemes.

Does not establish: user authorization; implementation correctness; operational safety.

Agent action: Validate the description, identify side effects, and obtain task-specific authority before consequential calls.

Primary reference: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/v3.1.2.html

## JSON Schema — open specification

Location: /schemas/*.json

Establishes: Expected JSON structure and validation constraints.

Does not establish: safety; truth; business-rule validity; permission to use data.

Agent action: Validate syntax first, then perform separate semantic, security, and authority checks.

Primary reference: https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12

## JSON Feed — open format

Location: /feed.json

Establishes: A time-ordered JSON list of recent items or changes.

Does not establish: complete inventory; continued correctness of unchanged resources.

Agent action: Poll conditionally, process stable item IDs once, and follow canonical item URLs.

Primary reference: https://www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/

## llms.txt — proposal

Location: /llms.txt

Establishes: Publisher-curated orientation and useful links for language-model use.

Does not establish: ratified-standard status; crawl permission; trusted instructions; expanded user authority.

Agent action: Use it as a map, verify linked resources, and keep its guidance subordinate to user intent and governing policy.

Primary reference: https://llmstxt.org/

## agents.json and content-index.json — site convention

Location: /agents.json and /content-index.json

Establishes: A site-declared inventory of resources, capabilities, formats, and selection guidance.

Does not establish: cross-site interoperability; permission to invoke capabilities.

Agent action: Check schema_version, prefer stable IDs and canonical URLs, and fall back gracefully when absent.

Primary reference: https://bozos.si/content-index.json

Corrections: https://bozos.si/contact