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The Website Specification (Website)

The Website Specification (Website)

Tech webfrontendstandards The Website Specification
The Website Specification provides a platform-agnostic, human and agent-readable checklist of 128 technical features every modern website should implement, from HTML basics to AI readiness.
What: The Website Specification is a new platform-agnostic standard that outlines 128 technical features for decent websites across ten areas including Foundations, SEO, Accessibility (WCAG-aligned), Security, Performance (Core Web Vitals), Privacy, and Agent Readiness (e.g., `llms.txt`). It links back to official sources like WHATWG, W3C, and IETF RFCs, and provides an open MCP server for AI agents.
Why it matters: This initiative formalizes best practices and emerging requirements for web development, highlighting the growing importance of AI agent readability (`llms.txt`) as a core component of web design alongside traditional concerns like accessibility and performance.
Takeaway: Review the Website Specification at `specification.website` to audit your existing projects and ensure compliance with modern web standards, especially for agent readiness and accessibility.
Deep dive
  • The Website Specification is a new, platform-agnostic standard detailing 128 essential technical features for websites.
  • It categorizes these features into ten areas: Foundations, SEO, Accessibility, Security, Well-Known URIs, Agent Readiness, Performance, Privacy, Resilience, and Internationalisation.
  • Key components include title tags, .well-known/security.txt, WCAG contrast standards, Core Web Vitals, and the new llms.txt for AI agents.
  • Each topic links directly to its source standard (WHATWG, W3C, IETF RFCs, WCAG, MDN).
  • It is designed to be readable by both humans and AI agents.
  • The entire specification is available via an open MCP (Machine Comprehensible Protocol) server and as an Agent Skill for compatible AI agents.
  • Markdown versions of individual pages are accessible via /llms.txt or Accept: text/markdown headers.
  • The project is open-source and encourages contributions via GitHub.
Decoder
  • WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines): A set of internationally recognized guidelines for making web content more accessible to people with disabilities.
  • Core Web Vitals: Metrics defined by Google that measure user experience aspects like loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of a webpage.
  • IETF RFCs (Request for Comments): Publications from the Internet Engineering Task Force that describe methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet.
  • WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group): A community of browser vendors and other interested parties focusing on the evolution of web technologies, notably maintaining the HTML and DOM standards.
  • MCP (Machine Comprehensible Protocol): A proposed open protocol for AI agents to interact with structured data and services, designed to improve the interoperability and capabilities of autonomous agents.
  • llms.txt: A proposed standard similar to robots.txt, intended to provide instructions and information for Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI agents interacting with a website.
Original article

What a good website does.

A platform-agnostic specification of the technical features every decent website should have — from <title> to /.well-known/security.txt, from WCAG contrast to llms.txt. Written for humans and agents.

Categories

Ten areas, mapped to widely-accepted standards.

  • Foundations

    The HTML, head, and document basics every page needs.

  • SEO

    Search visibility — robots.txt, sitemaps, canonicals, structured data.

  • Accessibility

    WCAG-aligned rules so people of all abilities can use the site.

  • Security

    Headers, transport, and policies that keep visitors safe.

  • Well-Known URIs

    Standard, agreed-upon paths under /.well-known/.

  • Agent Readiness

    Things that make a site legible to AI agents and crawlers.

  • Performance

    Core Web Vitals, caching, images, fonts, network behaviour.

  • Privacy

    Consent, signals, and respecting visitor choice.

  • Resilience

    Graceful failure — error pages, offline, redirects.

  • Internationalisation

    Language, locale, direction, and translated content.

Standards, not opinions

Each topic links back to the source standard — WHATWG, W3C, IETF RFCs, WCAG, MDN, and the organisations defining the modern web.

Platform agnostic

Whether you ship WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3, Next.js, Astro, Hugo, a Django app, or plain HTML, the spec is the spec. Implementation hints follow it, not the other way round.

Built in the open

Every page has an Edit on GitHub link. PRs welcome. Sources credited on every page.

Let your agent query the spec.

The whole spec is available as an open MCP server — read-only, no auth — plus a published Agent Skill that teaches any compatible agent when and how to use it. Per-page Markdown is available via /llms.txt and Accept: text/markdown on any spec URL.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "specification-website": {
      "transport": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.specification.website/mcp"
    }
  }
}

How to use this site

  1. Audit

    Run through the checklist. Each item is a “does the site do this — yes or no.”

  2. Learn

    Click into any item for what it is, why it matters, and how to implement it.

  3. Improve

    Found a gap, a stale fact, or a missing topic? Open a PR. Sources required.

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