Canonry

Agent-first AEO operating platform.

Agent-first open-source AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) operating platform. Track how AI answer engines mention your brand in answers and cite your domain in sources across Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, then act on the signal through the content engine and integrations.

Website: canonry.ai | Docs: github.com/Canonry/canonry

CLI: invoke as cnry (short form) or canonry — both ship with the npm package and are interchangeable. Examples in this skill use cnry.

When to Use

• Tracking brand mentions in AI answer text and citations in source links across providers
• Expanding the tracked-query basket from an ICP description (cnry discover run)
• Running technical SEO audits (14‑factor scoring)
• Implementing structured data (JSON‑LD)
• Diagnosing indexing gaps via Google Search Console / Bing Webmaster Tools
• Wiring server-side traffic (Cloud Run, WordPress, Vercel) and GA4 referrals into a single AEO signal
• Optimizing llms.txt, sitemaps, robots.txt for AI crawlers
• Submitting URLs to Google Indexing API and Bing IndexNow
• Analyzing competitor citation patterns

Core Philosophy

• Measure outcomes — AI models are black boxes; track mentions + citations, don't assume causality
• Signal over noise — Focus on high‑intent queries; avoid granular targeting until base visibility exists
• CLI‑native — API‑driven changes over manual CMS clicks; faster, repeatable, auditable

What Canonry Measures (Vocabulary)

Two parallel signals are tracked per (query × provider) snapshot. They are independent — a model can do either, both, or neither — never conflate them.

Term	Means	Headline metric
mentioned	The project's brand or domain appears in the LLM's answer text (the prose the model returns).	Mention Coverage — share of (query × provider) snapshots where the brand was mentioned. Mention Share is the project's share among the cited+mentioned set vs competitors.
cited	The project's domain appears in the LLM's source links (the grounding citations returned alongside the answer).	Citation Coverage — share of snapshots where the domain was in the source list.

Configure spec.brandAliases on the project (or pass via cnry apply) so the mention detector catches "Meta" alongside "Facebook", etc. The downloadable report (cnry report) and the dashboard both lead with Mention Coverage; Citation Coverage rides as the secondary gauge.

How to Operate

A canonry engagement follows the same loop regardless of project size:

1. Diagnose — Run a baseline sweep (cnry run <project> --wait) and a technical audit (cnry technical-aeo run <project> --wait, then cnry technical-aeo score <project> --format json). The audit crawls every page in the project's sitemap (auto-discovered from /sitemap.xml, the sitemap index, or robots.txt) so readiness reflects the whole site, not just one page, and persists the score to the dashboard. Read Mention Coverage first, Citation Coverage second. See references/aeo-analysis.md.
2. Prioritize — Triage by impact: indexing gaps → schema gaps → content gaps → query strategy. Branded-term losses are urgent.
3. Execute — Apply fixes via the canonry CLI or platform integrations. Use --dry-run on supported mutations (cnry project delete, cnry query replace, cnry backfill ...) to preview before committing. See references/canonry-cli.md for the full command catalog and references/wordpress-integration.md for the WordPress workflow.
4. Monitor — Re-run sweeps weekly (cnry run --all --wait fans out across every project). Correlate visibility shifts with deployments and competitor moves.
5. Report — Lead with data, not interpretation: "Lost the mention for <query> on Gemini between and — two competitors moved in. Here's what to fix." For a one-command client-facing summary, run cnry report <project> to generate a self-contained HTML bundle (mention + citation hero, competitor landscape, GSC + GA4 performance, insights, suggested next queries). Same payload is available via --format json and the canonry_report MCP tool.

Verifying without polluting metrics: when you need to test something on your own initiative — "did the latest provider deploy work?", "is this regression reproducible?", "would this query actually surface us?" — use cnry run <project> --probe --provider <p> --query "...". Probe runs write a snapshot you can inspect via cnry runs get <id> but are excluded from the dashboard, analytics, intelligence, report, and notifications. Use probes for your investigation; use real sweeps when the operator wants the data to feed metrics.

Surgical Reads

When you need a specific value rather than a full payload, use the dot-path getter:

bash

cnry get <project> scores.mentionShare.value
cnry get <project> scores.mentionCoverage.value
cnry get <project> insights[0].severity
cnry get <project> --from report scores.citationCoverage.value

cnry get resolves a path into the project's overview (default) or any registered source (report, traffic, discovery, etc.). Returns scalar values without forcing the agent to grep through a 30 KB JSON dump.

Common Starting Points

• New site, 0 citations → submit to GSC/Bing first; basic LocalBusiness/Service schema; llms.txt; trim to 8–12 high-intent queries. See references/indexing.md.
• Established site, regression → diff canonry runs to find the loss window; verify schema is intact; resubmit affected URLs. See references/aeo-analysis.md.
• Empty / generic query basket → describe the ICP and let discovery expand: cnry discover run <project> --icp "..." --wait, then cnry discover promote <session-id> to adopt the cited + aspirational queries. Multi-location projects can geo-constrain with --locations <label,...>.
• Multi-county targeting → reference counties in areaServed schema and llms.txt; do not split into per-county queries until base visibility exists.

Google Analytics 4

GA4 is a first-class signal alongside citation tracking. Connect once with cnry ga connect <project> --property-id <id> --key-file <path>; cnry ga sync then pulls daily landing-page traffic, AI-referral sessions across 10 known providers (chatgpt, perplexity, claude, gemini, openai, anthropic, copilot, phind, you.com, meta.ai), and social referrals split into Organic vs Paid via GA4's channelGroup — and persists everything into four DB tables (gaTrafficSnapshots, gaAiReferrals, gaSocialReferrals, gaTrafficSummaries). All read commands query that local store, so they are fast and quotaless once a sync has run. AI referrals are tracked across three GA4 attribution dimensions (session source / first-user source / manual UTM) and joined to landing pages, so you can see which page each AI provider sent traffic to. Use cnry ga traffic for the current snapshot, cnry ga attribution --trend for a unified channel-share overview with biggest-mover deltas, and cnry ga ai-referral-history / cnry ga social-referral-history for daily series. See references/canonry-cli.md for the full command catalog and return-shape details.

Server-Side Traffic

When the project ships behind a server you control, wire crawler + AI-referral evidence directly from the edge: cnry traffic connect cloud-run | wordpress | vercel <project> ... writes credentials to ~/.canonry/config.yaml, cnry traffic sync pulls and classifies logs into hourly buckets, and cnry traffic events / sources / status expose the rollups. See references/server-side-traffic.md for adapter-specific setup.

Vercel gotcha: a freshly connected Vercel source captures only going-forward traffic — lastSyncedAt is seeded to NOW to avoid the 30-day default window exceeding Vercel's ~14-day request-logs retention (which would otherwise throw on every first sync). Use cnry traffic backfill <project> --source <id> --days N for historical recovery. If an idle Vercel/Cloud Run source has been failing long enough that lastSyncedAt aged past retention, unstick it with cnry traffic reset <project> --source <id> --advance-to-now.

Local AEO (Google Business Profile)

For businesses with a physical location or service area, Google Business Profile is the local-AEO signal source — reviews, search-keyword impressions, daily performance metrics, and (for hotels) structured amenities + booking CTAs all feed how AI engines answer local-intent queries. Connect with cnry gbp connect <project>, discover locations with cnry gbp locations discover <project>, and pick which sync with cnry gbp locations select/deselect.

Hard prerequisites and gotchas — read references/google-business-profile.md before attempting setup: GBP requires a Google access-form approval (0 QPM until granted), the only OAuth scope is the write-capable business.manage, reviews live on a separately-gated legacy v4 API that the Basic approval does NOT grant (and can't be self-enabled), and the Q&A API was retired (2025-11-03). Keyword data is heavily privacy-redacted (often 100% for small businesses); an empty place-action profile is a real AEO finding to surface, but an empty lodging result is a verify-not-a-gap (the Lodging API can return 0 readable groups even when the owner-facing "Hotel details" panel has amenities set). The reference doc has the full setup walkthrough, the real-world data shapes, and the troubleshooting matrix.

Built-in Analyst (Aero)

Canonry ships a built-in agent — Aero — for users who don't already have one. Drive it from the CLI:

bash

cnry agent ask <project> "what changed since the last sweep?"
cnry agent ask <project> "..." --provider claude --scope read-only
cnry agent memory list <project>          # durable project notes

Aero also wakes unprompted after every run.completed so insights and regressions get analyzed without a user click. Users who already run their own agent (Claude Code, Codex, custom) wire webhooks instead: cnry agent attach <project> --url <webhook-url> subscribes to run.completed, insight.critical, insight.high, citation.gained.

Boundaries & Safety

• Never touch live WordPress without explicit approval
• Back up ~/.canonry/config.yaml before any config edit
• Never fabricate mention or citation data — if a sweep hasn't run, say so; never coerce answerMentioned null → false (null = "not checked")
• Client data stays private — canonry repo is public; no real domains in issues
• Respect API rate limits — batch operations, avoid tight loops

References

File	Read when
references/canonry-cli.md	Looking up specific canonry commands, flags, or JSON return shapes
references/aeo-analysis.md	Interpreting sweep output, diagnosing regressions, planning content fixes
references/indexing.md	Submitting URLs, checking GSC/Bing coverage, fixing indexing gaps
references/wordpress-integration.md	Connecting to WordPress, editing pages, pushing staging → live
references/server-side-traffic.md	Wiring server-log evidence (Cloud Run, WordPress, Vercel adapters) for AI Visibility — Server-Side. Connect, sync, manage sources, troubleshoot.
references/google-business-profile.md	Connecting Google Business Profile for local AEO: access-form approval, GCP API enablement, the v4-reviews access gate, hotel lodging/place-action signals, data shapes, troubleshooting.

---

Tools: canonry v4+, @ainyc/aeo-audit v1.3+
Website: canonry.ai | Org: ainyc.ai | Reference: AINYC AEO Methodology