---
title: AEO & Agent Readability overview
description: Every agent-facing artifact leadtype emits, how they map to the
  agent-readability spec and AEO scoring rubrics, and how to audit a site.
lastModified: "2026-06-12T08:52:04+01:00"
---
Agents read more docs than humans now. AEO (answer engine optimization) is making sure that when an agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, a coding agent in an editor — looks for your product, it finds you, reads clean markdown instead of scraping HTML, attributes you correctly, and can act on what it reads.

Leadtype's agent surface covers that end to end. This page is the map: every artifact, what it does, which guide wires it up.

## The agent surface

|Layer|Artifacts|What they do|
|--|--|--|
|**Discovery**|`llms.txt` (+ `/.well-known/llms.txt`), `llms-full.txt`, `sitemap.xml`, `sitemap.md`, `robots.txt` with [Content-Signals](/docs/aeo/optimize-docs-for-agents)|Let agents find your pages and know your crawl/training policy without scraping.|
|**Content**|Markdown mirrors at `${urlPath}.md` with `canonical_url`/`last_updated` frontmatter, `Accept: text/markdown` content negotiation, agent user-agent detection, missing-page markdown responses|Serve agents clean markdown — cheaper to read, harder to misquote.|
|**Identity**|JSON-LD entity graph (`Organization`, `WebSite`, `SoftwareApplication`, per-page `TechArticle` + breadcrumbs), SEO meta defaults, `agent-readability.json` manifest|Tell answer engines exactly who publishes what, so they stop hallucinating your positioning.|
|**Integration**|[Agent skills](/docs/reference/skills) (`/.well-known/agent-skills`), the A2A agent card, a [docs MCP server](/docs/reference/mcp), [WebMCP browser tools](/docs/reference/webmcp), [search agent tools](/docs/search/agent-tools)|Let agents act on your docs: search them, fetch pages, install capabilities.|

All of it derives from one config (`docs.config.ts` — `product`, `organization`, `agents`, `navigation`) and generates at build time. Runtime helpers are opt-in.

## Two entry points

**You have a docs site** — the pipeline emits everything above from your MDX source in one CLI run. Start at [Optimize docs for agents](/docs/aeo/optimize-docs-for-agents), then wire the runtime half with [Serve agent responses](/docs/aeo/serve-agent-responses).

**You don't have a docs tree** — a CMS-backed blog, a marketing site, a data-driven app, or one microfrontend of a larger origin. [`generateAgentArtifacts()`](/docs/aeo/generate-artifacts-without-docs) takes an in-memory page list and emits the same artifact set, no `.mdx` files required.

## How this maps to the scoring rubrics

Two public scanners measure agent readability, and leadtype's output is designed against both:

**[Vercel's agent readability spec](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/agent-readability-spec)** checks discovery files, markdown mirrors with frontmatter, content negotiation (`Accept: text/markdown`, `Vary: Accept`), robots rules that don't block AI crawlers, sitemap `lastmod`, JSON-LD, and missing-page handling. Leadtype's build-time artifacts plus the runtime helpers cover the checklist — including the details scanners actually fail sites on: `canonical_url`/`last_updated` frontmatter, the `Vary: Accept` header, canonical `Link` headers on markdown responses, and 200-with-markdown for missing pages (agents discard 404 bodies).

**[ora.ai's methodology](https://ora.ai/methodology)** scores five lanes. Leadtype's lane is **Identity** (llms.txt format, JSON-LD structure, sitemap/robots configuration, metadata consistency) and most of **Agent Integration** (MCP server readiness). **Auth & Access** — OpenAPI specs, OAuth — is product-side work leadtype can link to but not generate. Set expectations accordingly: leadtype maxes the identity and integration signals; it can't move discovery recall or auth scores by itself.

## Audit your site

Verify against the spec from CI or your terminal:

```bash
npx @vercel/agent-readability audit https://your-site.com
```

Add `--json` for machine output and `--min-score 90` to fail a CI job below a threshold. The failed checks link back to spec sections; each one maps to a leadtype feature listed above. For build-time validation of the artifacts themselves, see [Validate in CI](/docs/pipeline/validate-in-ci).

## What the files don't fix

Artifacts get agents to your content; the content still has to answer their questions. [Write for agents](/docs/writing/write-for-agents) covers the one rule that moved the [evals](/docs/concepts/evals): document the non-obvious — defaults, failure modes, decision guidance — not restatements of your types and CLI help.