A2WF — Agent-to-Web Framework

Validate, generate, and audit A2WF siteai.json files — the open standard for AI agent governance on websites. Use when working with siteai.json policies, checking website A2WF compliance, generating agent permission files, or auditing how a site controls AI agent behavior. TRIGGER "a2wf", "siteai.json", "agent governance", "website ai policy", "agent permissions", "a2wf validate", "a2wf generate", "a2wf audit"

A2WF is an open standard that defines what AI agents can and cannot do on a website via a machine-readable siteai.json file at the site root. Think of it as a legally actionable robots.txt for AI agents.

• Spec: https://a2wf.org/specification/
• GitHub: https://github.com/a2wf/spec
• Schema: https://a2wf.org/schema/core-v1.0.json

Commands

1. Validate — Check a siteai.json

Validate a siteai.json file against the A2WF v1.0 spec. The validator is local-only (no network requests).

# Validate a local file
node {baseDir}/scripts/validate.mjs /path/to/siteai.json

# Validate from stdin
echo '{"specVersion":"1.0",...}' | node {baseDir}/scripts/validate.mjs --stdin

To validate a live website: Use web_fetch to download https://example.com/siteai.json, save to a temp file, then validate it.

Output: errors (must fix), warnings (should fix), info (suggestions). Exit 0 = valid, exit 1 = invalid.

If the user pastes raw JSON instead of a file path, save it to a temp file first, then validate.

2. Generate — Create a siteai.json

Build a spec-compliant siteai.json interactively or from parameters.

node {baseDir}/scripts/generate.mjs \
  --domain "https://example.com" \
  --name "Example Store" \
  --language "en" \
  --category "e-commerce" \
  --jurisdiction "EU"

When used interactively (no flags), ask the user:

1. Domain and site name
2. Category (e-commerce, news, healthcare, banking, restaurant, saas, other)
3. Jurisdiction and applicable laws
4. For each permission group (read/action/data): which operations to allow/deny
5. Rate limits, agent identification requirements, scraping policy

Output is a complete, validated siteai.json ready to deploy at the site root.

3. Audit — Analyze a website's A2WF posture

node {baseDir}/scripts/validate.mjs https://example.com --audit

Performs:

• Discovery check: Does /siteai.json exist? Correct content-type?
• Schema validation against core v1.0
• Permission completeness: Are critical permissions (scraping, account creation, data access) explicitly set?
• Legal coverage: Are jurisdiction and applicable laws declared?
• Extension check: Are companion extensions present and valid?

Outputs a structured report with a compliance score (0–100).

Quick Reference

siteai.json structure (v1.0)

{
  "specVersion": "1.0",
  "identity": {
    "domain": "https://example.com",
    "name": "Site Name",
    "inLanguage": "en",
    "jurisdiction": "EU",
    "applicableLaw": ["GDPR", "EU AI Act"]
  },
  "permissions": {
    "read":   { "productCatalog": {"allowed": true, "rateLimit": 60} },
    "action": { "createAccount":  {"allowed": false} },
    "data":   { "customerRecords": {"allowed": false} }
  }
}

Permission groups

Group	Controls	Key examples
read	What agents can read	productCatalog, pricing, reviews, faq, contactInfo
action	What agents can do	search, addToCart, checkout, createAccount, submitContactForm
data	What data agents can access	customerRecords, orderHistory, paymentInfo, employeeData

Category templates

Use --category with generate to start from a template: ecommerce, banking, healthcare, news-media, restaurant, saas.

For agent developers

When browsing a website, check for siteai.json at the domain root before taking actions. Respect the declared permissions — violations are documented and legally actionable under the declared jurisdiction.

See the full Agent Implementer Guide: {baseDir}/references/implementer-guide.md