The Crucible

The open standard for the agentic web.

The Foundry Standard defines what it means for a website to be AI agent-ready. Run The Assay to get your score. Earn your certification.

Three domains. One standard.

The Foundry Standard evaluates every site across three weighted domains. Each reflects a distinct aspect of AI agent compatibility.

Agent Accessibility30%

Can AI agents actually navigate and extract meaning from your site? This domain covers structured data, semantic markup, machine-readable metadata, and the presence of agent-friendly artifacts like agents.json and llms.txt.

  • Structured data (JSON-LD, schema.org)
  • Semantic HTML and ARIA roles
  • agents.json publication
  • llms.txt presence and format
  • Crawlability and robots.txt hygiene
Agent Security30%

Does your site handle AI agent interactions safely, without introducing risk to users or operators? This domain covers authentication patterns, rate limiting, input validation, and resistance to prompt injection vectors.

  • Authentication and authorization controls
  • Rate limiting and abuse prevention
  • Input sanitization and output encoding
  • Prompt injection surface area
  • HTTPS and transport security
Agent Safety40%

Does your site behave responsibly when AI agents act on its behalf? The highest-weighted domain covers consent surfaces, reversibility of agent-initiated actions, transparency disclosures, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.

  • Consent and disclosure patterns
  • Reversibility of agent-triggered actions
  • Human-in-the-loop checkpoints
  • Transparency about AI involvement
  • Data minimization for agent interactions

Certification tiers

Earn certification by meeting the scoring thresholds across all three domains. Higher tiers require stronger fundamentals and active participation in the standard.

Bronzescore ≥ 60

Your site meets the baseline threshold for safe AI agent interaction.

  • Overall score of 60 or above
  • No critical failures in any domain
  • Passing marks in Agent Safety
Silverscore ≥ 75

Your site is actively signaling AI agent compatibility and meets strong standards.

  • Overall score of 75 or above
  • agents.json published and valid
  • No critical failures in any domain
  • Bronze requirements met
Goldscore ≥ 90

Your site exemplifies best-in-class AI agent readiness. The highest Foundry Standard certification.

  • Overall score of 90 or above
  • Annual certification audit
  • Silver requirements met
  • All three domains passing

Find out where you stand.

The Assay runs your site against The Foundry Standard in seconds. Free, no account required.