diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index c1242a9..8b3c7b0 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -33,14 +33,15 @@ Read it left to right as an agent's visit: find what's offered, use the site, pr | 02 | **[ai-catalog](https://ax.guide/standards/ai-catalog)**
AI Catalog | Find | A site's list of its AI offerings | | 03 | **[WebMCP](https://ax.guide/standards/webmcp)** | Act | A page hands typed tools to the agent in your browser | | 04 | **[NLWeb](https://ax.guide/standards/nlweb)** | Act | Ask a website questions in plain language | -| 05 | **[Web Bot Auth](https://ax.guide/standards/web-bot-auth)** | Identity | Cryptographic ID for bots | -| 06 | **[Poppy](https://ax.guide/standards/poppy)**
Personal Agent Protocol (PAP) | Identity | Your agent signs in to a company as you | -| 07 | **[auth.md](https://ax.guide/standards/auth-md)** | Identity | Your agent signs you up for a new service | -| 08 | **[UCP](https://ax.guide/standards/ucp)**
Universal Commerce Protocol | Shop | A shared language for agent shopping | -| 09 | **[ACP](https://ax.guide/standards/acp)**
Agentic Commerce Protocol | Shop | Products (and checkout) into ChatGPT | -| 10 | **[AP2](https://ax.guide/standards/ap2)**
Agent Payments Protocol | Pay | Signed proof of what you authorized | -| 11 | **[MPP](https://ax.guide/standards/mpp)**
Machine Payments Protocol | Pay | Pay inside a web request, card or crypto | -| 12 | **[x402](https://ax.guide/standards/x402)** | Pay | Cents-per-request payments over HTTP 402 | +| 05 | **[CAP](https://ax.guide/standards/cap)**
Concierge Agent Protocol | Act | An agent asks a company's own agent and gets its answer | +| 06 | **[Web Bot Auth](https://ax.guide/standards/web-bot-auth)** | Identity | Cryptographic ID for bots | +| 07 | **[Poppy](https://ax.guide/standards/poppy)**
Personal Agent Protocol (PAP) | Identity | Your agent signs in to a company as you | +| 08 | **[auth.md](https://ax.guide/standards/auth-md)** | Identity | Your agent signs you up for a new service | +| 09 | **[UCP](https://ax.guide/standards/ucp)**
Universal Commerce Protocol | Shop | A shared language for agent shopping | +| 10 | **[ACP](https://ax.guide/standards/acp)**
Agentic Commerce Protocol | Shop | Products (and checkout) into ChatGPT | +| 11 | **[AP2](https://ax.guide/standards/ap2)**
Agent Payments Protocol | Pay | Signed proof of what you authorized | +| 12 | **[MPP](https://ax.guide/standards/mpp)**
Machine Payments Protocol | Pay | Pay inside a web request, card or crypto | +| 13 | **[x402](https://ax.guide/standards/x402)** | Pay | Cents-per-request payments over HTTP 402 | Each page has a one-line picture of the standard, a **reality check**, how it works, who's behind it, primary sources, the standards it's often confused with, and the date someone last checked it. The site also has a [side-by-side comparison](https://ax.guide/compare) and a [which-one-do-I-need guide](https://ax.guide/which). diff --git a/content/guide.json b/content/guide.json index 817bec1..dacaf7d 100644 --- a/content/guide.json +++ b/content/guide.json @@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ { "situation": "You offer APIs, MCP servers or agents and want to be found", "standards": ["ard", "ai-catalog"], "note": "Serve the same file at both ard.json and ai-catalog.json." }, { "situation": "Agents use your site inside people's browsers", "standards": ["webmcp"], "note": "Add tools to your key flows, and keep the normal page." }, { "situation": "You have lots of structured content people and agents want to query", "standards": ["nlweb"] }, + { "situation": "You already run a support or sales agent and want other agents to ask it", "standards": ["cap"], "note": "Track it; 1.0 Draft is from October 16, 2026, and every listed site is served by the author's company." }, { "situation": "Your bot visits other sites, or you need to verify bots on yours", "standards": ["web-bot-auth"] }, { "situation": "You want agents to create accounts on your service without a sign-up form", "standards": ["auth-md"] }, { "situation": "Customers' own agents should sign in and act on their accounts", "standards": ["poppy"], "note": "Track it; Draft 0.2 is from October 24, 2026, and 0.3 is in progress." }, diff --git a/content/home.json b/content/home.json index 159379a..18b90c0 100644 --- a/content/home.json +++ b/content/home.json @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ "items": [ { "title": "Compare them side by side", - "body": "All twelve on one screen, plus the pairs people mix up.", + "body": "All thirteen on one screen, plus the pairs people mix up.", "href": "/compare" }, { diff --git a/content/pairs.json b/content/pairs.json index b9cb171..e3c098c 100644 --- a/content/pairs.json +++ b/content/pairs.json @@ -8,6 +8,15 @@ { "id": "ai-catalog", "says": "The publishing format. Your site's list of its AI offerings." } ] }, + { + "id": "nlweb-vs-cap", + "title": "NLWeb vs CAP", + "summary": "Search the site's content vs. ask the company's agent.", + "sides": [ + { "id": "nlweb", "says": "An ask endpoint that answers from your site's structured data." }, + { "id": "cap", "says": "A text file that sends the question to your own agent, with optional sign-in for account questions." } + ] + }, { "id": "ucp-vs-acp", "title": "UCP vs ACP", diff --git a/content/site.json b/content/site.json index 045ff06..74cf4a8 100644 --- a/content/site.json +++ b/content/site.json @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ "title": "ax.guide: The Agentic-Web Cheatsheet", "description": "The open standards that let AI agents find, use, sign in to, shop on and pay websites, in plain words. What each one does, who is behind it, and how real it is today.", "image": { - "alt": "ax.guide, the Agentic-Web Cheatsheet: twelve standards, five jobs, only four carry real traffic", + "alt": "ax.guide, the Agentic-Web Cheatsheet: thirteen standards, five jobs, only four carry real traffic", "heading": "The Agentic-Web Cheatsheet", "line": "What each standard does, who is behind it, and how real it is today." } diff --git a/content/standards/cap.md b/content/standards/cap.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fe927da --- /dev/null +++ b/content/standards/cap.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +--- +name: CAP +full_name: Concierge Agent Protocol +job: act +order: 3 +status: draft +status_note: 1.0 Draft (Nov 8, 2026); six listed sites, all served by the author's company +tagline: ask a company's agent +phrase: An agent asks a company's own agent and gets its answer +analogy: A front-desk number for agents. They ask the company's concierge instead of searching the building themselves. +looks_like: /agent.txt and POST /cap/v1/messages +when_to_use: When your company already runs a support or sales agent and you want other people's agents to ask it directly. Track it; it's a fresh draft from one vendor. +backers: Tony Spiro (Cosmic); no standards body +reality_check: Draft, first published October 16, 2026. On November 11, 2026, [the protocol's own directory](https://conciergeprotocol.org/directory) listed six sites that pass its check, and all six are served by Cosmic, the author's company. Five are Cosmic's own sites and one is a customer's. No AI assistant is publicly known to look for `agent.txt` on its own yet. +links: + - label: Specification (1.0 Draft) + url: https://conciergeprotocol.org/spec + - label: Repository (spec, reference server, checker) + url: https://github.com/conciergeprotocol/cap + - label: Caller card + url: https://conciergeprotocol.org/cap.txt + - label: Directory of sites that pass the check + url: https://conciergeprotocol.org/directory + - label: Benchmark (by the authors) + url: https://conciergeprotocol.org/benchmark +related: + - id: nlweb + note: Both let an agent ask a site in plain language. NLWeb answers from the site's structured content; CAP hands the question to the company's own agent, which can also answer for a signed-in customer. + - id: webmcp + note: WebMCP hands tools to the agent inside the browser page. CAP is an endpoint on your server and never shows the agent your tools. + - id: poppy + note: Both let a person's agent reach a company. Poppy covers sessions, sign-in, APIs and the web; CAP is only a question-and-answer door, with an optional OAuth sign-in. + - id: ai-catalog + note: A site can list its agent.txt as an entry in its AI catalog (or ARD file). +last_verified: "2026-11-11" +spec_sources: + - kind: git-path + repo: conciergeprotocol/cap + path: spec.md + pin: "66495014ef731b8d5e81102e2d73e5e88d8923d0" +--- + +## How it works + +A company publishes a short text file at `/agent.txt`, next to `robots.txt`. Its first line is `Protocol: CAP/1.0`, and a `CAP` line gives a base URL. A visiting agent posts a question to `{CAP}/messages` as JSON, with a `CAP-From` header naming itself, and gets back one message: `working`, `done` with a text `reply`, or `failed`. A slow answer comes back as `202` with a URL to check later, and a follow-up points to the previous message. An agent that can only open URLs can ask a public question with a plain GET. + +The company's agent answers with its own tools, prompts and keys, and the reply never names them. On a clothing store, a visiting agent asks "Do you have the linen shirt in medium, under $80?" and gets one answer with links, instead of filtering listing pages and opening each product. For a question about someone's account, such as "where is my order?", the person signs in on the company's own page with a code the agent shows them (OAuth device sign-in, RFC 8628), and the token works only for that agent. An action that is hard to undo, such as a cancellation, waits until the person approves it on a link. + +The spec also asks sites to point to the file from their homepage (``) and from `llms.txt`, for agents that read pages rather than look for the file. + +## Who's behind it + +Tony Spiro, founder of the headless CMS company [Cosmic](https://www.cosmicjs.com), wrote it and is the only author in [the repository](https://github.com/conciergeprotocol/cap). The first public draft, 1.0 Draft, is dated October 16, 2026, and [the changelog](https://github.com/conciergeprotocol/cap/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md) lists additions through November 8. The spec is under CC BY 4.0 and the reference server under Apache 2.0. There is no standards body; [the governance page](https://github.com/conciergeprotocol/cap/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md) says 1.0 becomes final only when several independent owners serve it in production. Cosmic serves CAP for sites built on it. + +[The authors' benchmark](https://conciergeprotocol.org/benchmark) (October 22, 2026) ran one test store and found that an agent got the same answers asking through CAP as reading the site, at about a fifth of the cost. Nobody else has published a test. + +## Neighbours + +NLWeb is the closest: both are "ask the site." NLWeb searches the site's own structured data; CAP passes the question to whatever agent the company already runs, and adds questions about a customer's account. [The spec maps a CAP message onto an A2A task](https://conciergeprotocol.org/spec#relationship-to-other-protocols), so a company can serve both from the same agent. diff --git a/content/standards/nlweb.md b/content/standards/nlweb.md index 118bafd..bf8b374 100644 --- a/content/standards/nlweb.md +++ b/content/standards/nlweb.md @@ -27,6 +27,8 @@ related: note: WebMCP works inside the browser page. NLWeb is an endpoint on your server. - id: ai-catalog note: An AI catalog (or ARD file) can list your NLWeb endpoint. + - id: cap + note: CAP also lets an agent ask a site, but hands the question to the company's own agent instead of searching its content. last_verified: "2026-10-19" spec_sources: - kind: git-path diff --git a/content/standards/ucp.md b/content/standards/ucp.md index 9622b83..57c4ab0 100644 --- a/content/standards/ucp.md +++ b/content/standards/ucp.md @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ analogy: A universal power socket for shopping. Any assistant plugs into any sto looks_like: /.well-known/ucp when_to_use: When you sell goods and want any AI assistant to browse, cart and check out. backers: Google + Shopify, with governing and tech councils -reality_check: In production, and the most real of the twelve. According to an independent tracker, [UCP Checker](https://ucpchecker.com/blog/state-of-agentic-commerce-september-2026), about 17,800 stores had a working UCP profile on September 22, 2026, about 60% of them on Shopify and most of the rest on Wix. One catch is that the [August release](https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/ucp/releases/tag/v2026-08-25) lists 11 groups of breaking changes, and about four in ten stores still declare the April version, so "supports UCP" doesn't tell you which version. +reality_check: In production, and the most real of the thirteen. According to an independent tracker, [UCP Checker](https://ucpchecker.com/blog/state-of-agentic-commerce-september-2026), about 17,800 stores had a working UCP profile on September 22, 2026, about 60% of them on Shopify and most of the rest on Wix. One catch is that the [August release](https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/ucp/releases/tag/v2026-08-25) lists 11 groups of breaking changes, and about four in ten stores still declare the April version, so "supports UCP" doesn't tell you which version. links: - label: Specification (ucp.dev) url: https://ucp.dev/ diff --git a/spec-pins.json b/spec-pins.json index bd152ad..5590e91 100644 --- a/spec-pins.json +++ b/spec-pins.json @@ -59,6 +59,19 @@ } ] }, + { + "id": "cap", + "name": "CAP", + "page": "https://ax.guide/standards/cap", + "sources": [ + { + "kind": "git-path", + "repo": "conciergeprotocol/cap", + "path": "spec.md", + "pin": "66495014ef731b8d5e81102e2d73e5e88d8923d0" + } + ] + }, { "id": "web-bot-auth", "name": "Web Bot Auth",