AI Discovery Standard — How WordPress sites identify themselves to AI agents

[skswave]

first let me say yes the following is prepared by my AI. I have always resorted to tools that help me communicate from using an APPLE II in the 5th grade in the 70's till now. My apologies but my articulation would not be as effective. My company is embarking on a standard for how the web speaks AI. This is not my first rodeo I was CEO of WAVE SYSTEMS CORP and we were founding members and key implementers of the Trusted computing standards.

The Problem
Every AI feature in this repo assumes the AI is inside WordPress — editing content, generating titles, managing blocks. But there's an equally important question: how do external AI agents as the largest growing user group understand a WordPress site?

Right now, when someone asks ChatGPT or Claude about a WordPress site, the AI scrapes HTML, guesses at what the organization does, and presents its interpretation as fact. There's no structured way for a site to say "here's who we are, what we do, what we allow, and here's cryptographic proof it came from us."

The proposed Standard: /.well-known/ai
We've published an open standard (CC-BY-4.0) called the AI Discovery Standard that gives any website a machine-readable identity for AI agents:

/.well-known/ai → Discovery manifest (who we are, policies, contact, concepts)
/ai/knowledge.json → Full organizational encyclopedia
/ai/feed.json → AI-optimized chronological updates
Each manifest includes SHA-256 content hashes and an optional secp256k1 digital signature, so AI agents can verify the data actually came from the domain owner. Humans have demonstrated they will not look at security, but AI eats it up he singed web is possible.

Spec: https://rootz.global/ai/standard.md

Why This Matters for WordPress
WordPress powers 43% of the web. If WordPress made it easy to publish /.well-known/ai, it would:

Become the de facto standard — no other CMS has this reach
Give site owners control over how AI represents them (quoting policies, attribution, contact channels) not stuck on how google scans them
Complement the Abilities API — Abilities handle what AI does inside WordPress; Discovery handles what AI knows about WordPress sites
Complete the AI stack — MCP (interface) + Abilities (logic) + Client SDK (transport) + Discovery (identity)

Working Implementation
We built a free WordPress plugin (Rootz AI Discovery, GPL v2) that generates the full three-tier architecture with zero configuration:

7 JSON endpoints auto-generated from WordPress data
secp256k1 wallet per site (generated on activation) the foundations for a strong identity to manufacture data with origin
SHA-256 content hashes for every page to assure ownership and origin
Signed manifest with ECDSA signature. The application of trusted computing standards to the WEB
Scanner at https://rootz.global/scanner to test any site
Real-world testing: Structured /.well-known/ai data scores 10/10 AI confidence vs. 4-7/10 for scraping alone. Two-thirds of sites we tested couldn't tell AI whether quoting was even allowed.

Early Adoption
Six sites now publish at /.well-known/ai across blockchain (inblock.io, Grade A 95/100), consumer (unveiledmuse.studio), and enterprise supply chain (Made in USA One / Verity One). The standard is two weeks old.

The Ask
I'm not proposing the plugin become part of core — I'm proposing the standard be considered as part of WordPress's AI strategy. Specifically:

Evaluate /.well-known/ai as a complement to the Abilities API / MCP adapter lets define skills discovery
Consider core support — even a simple filter that lets themes/plugins register a /.well-known/ai route would unlock the ecosystem
Join the conversation — the spec is CC-BY-4.0, we want community input on what WordPress sites should tell AI agents
The AI Browser era is coming. WordPress can either be discoverable or invisible it should be the creator's choice. This is the robots.txt moment for AI.

Links:

Standard spec: https://rootz.global/ai/standard.md
Scanner (test any site): https://rootz.global/scanner
WordPress plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/rootz-ai-discovery/
Blog post: https://rootz.global/blog/the-signed-web
Live example: https://rootz.global/.well-known/ai

i hope we can find a path to engage Steven Sprague email Steven@sprague.com git: skswave

[jeffpaul]

@Jameswlepage curious for your take on this, perhaps abilities and markdown output could help with some of what's raised here?