Websites were designed for human browsers, not AI agents. The gaps are costly.
Agents scrape 55KB HTML when 8KB Markdown would suffice. Publishers pay for wasted bandwidth. Agents pay for wasted tokens.
55KB HTML → 8KB .llm.md
Agents must crawl entire sites (5-30 minutes) to understand capabilities. No structured manifest. No guaranteed completeness.
5 min crawl vs 2 sec /llms.txt
Publishers can't track agent behavior, measure value, or understand impact. Agents are invisible. No analytics. No attribution.
0% visibility → Full AI-* headers
ARW provides the missing infrastructure for efficient agent-web interaction. Not adversarial—collaborative. Everyone benefits.
| Metric | Without ARW | With ARW | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content Size | 55KB HTML | 8KB Markdown | 85% reduction |
| Discovery Time | 5-30 minutes | 2 seconds | 10x faster |
| Observability | 0% (blind) | 100% (AI-* headers) | Full visibility |
| Actions | None | OAuth-protected | Transactional |
| Bandwidth Cost | $450/month | $68/month | $382/month saved |
ARW reduces transaction costs for AI agents by 80-90%, enabling the shift identified in NBER research as the "Coasean Singularity"—the transition to near-zero transaction costs.
Structured discovery via `/llms.txt` replaces crawling
Machine views vs HTML parsing
Declarative OAuth actions
Observability headers enable tracking
When transaction costs approach zero, economic organization fundamentally reshapes. ARW provides the infrastructure that enables this transition for AI agents.
Investment Thesis
"ARW is essential infrastructure for the agent economy, not an optional enhancement. As agent traffic grows from 40% to 70%, websites without ARW will be at a severe competitive disadvantage."
PROGRESSIVE LAYERS
"From findable to understandable — and finally operable."
agents can find your content
agents can understand your content
agents can act safely and with consent
agents and sites speak shared protocols
The web layer remains irreplaceable as the universal entry point, discovery mechanism, and fallback for the agentic ecosystem — regardless of which specialized protocols emerge.
CORE PRINCIPLES
no SEO penalties
visible policies, visible intent
OAuth before action
credit where due
built on the web's DNA
Start with ARW-1 (Discovery Ready) in just 2 hours
2-hour implementation guide
Migration path and features
Real-world implementations