About Agent Web Protocol

Agent Web Protocol (AWP) is an open standard that defines how websites declare themselves as agent-ready. At its core is agent.json, a machine-readable file placed at /.well-known/agent.json that tells AI agents what a website can do, how to authenticate, and what actions are available.

The web was built for humans, then adapted for search engines with robots.txt and structured data. Now, as AI agents become the primary way users interact with online services, the web needs a new primitive — a standard way for sites to declare their capabilities to autonomous software agents.

Origin

AWP was conceived and prototyped at the Nebius hackathon in March 2026, where it won first place. The core insight was simple: every major era of machine-web interaction started with a small, declarative file. The agentic era deserves the same.

What began as a hackathon project quickly became a serious standards effort. The specification is developed in the open, with community input driving every major decision.

The Ecosystem

Design Principles

• Simplicity first
  A minimal agent.json should be 5 lines. Complexity is opt-in.
• Secure by default
  Auth requirements are explicit. No ambient authority.
• Crawl → Walk → Run
  Start with discovery, add actions when ready, layer in auth and payments over time.
• Web-native
  Built on JSON, HTTP, OAuth, and well-known URIs. No new transport required.
• Agent-agnostic
  Works with any agent framework, any LLM, any orchestration layer.