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World desk6 min

AIFeed Explained: Signed Content Permissions for AI Web Crawlers

AIFeed is a draft proposal for signed, domain-anchored AI content permissions. Here is how its verification flow works, what it differs from, and what its reported tests do—and do not—show.
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AIFeed is a draft protocol proposal for publishers to publish machine-readable rules about how AI agents may use their content, sign those rules, and let agents verify them. Its proposed trust flow combines an Ed25519 signature with a public key anchored in DNS; it also describes revocation and key rotation. AIFeed is not the same as robots.txt, a way to prove every crawler’s identity, or a guarantee that a declared permission is legally enforceable. The project says its specifications are not frozen, and reports that external cryptographic review and a live pilot are still pending.

What AIFeed proposes

AIFeed addresses a publisher’s ability to state content-use permissions in a form an agent can verify. The project characterizes existing text policies as potentially unsigned, not bound to a domain, and lacking revocation. That is the project’s framing of the problem, not a universal assessment of every crawler control.

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In the proposed workflow, a publisher builds a site manifest and agent-ready page content. The manifest can express permissions for uses such as training, retrieval, and quotation, along with crawl limits, licensing information, and revision metadata. Rather than relying only on a human-readable policy, AIFeed proposes a signed, domain-associated declaration that a compatible agent can check.

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The project describes the manifest as discoverable at /.well-known/ai.json. That path is a discovery convention in the proposal; it does not by itself make a site’s policy authoritative or ensure that an agent will follow it.

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How the proposed verification flow works

  1. The publisher creates signing keys and content. The repository describes generating an Ed25519 key pair, building the signed manifest and page Markdown, and validating the output locally.
  2. The domain publishes a key anchor. A DNS TXT record under _aifeed is intended to associate the domain with the public key used to verify its signed material.
  3. The agent checks the connection and signature. A compatible agent is instructed to verify TLS, the domain, the signature using JCS canonicalization and Ed25519, and the DNS key anchor. These checks are intended to establish that the signed declaration corresponds to the domain being accessed.
  4. The agent checks whether the key or declaration has been revoked. AIFeed describes re-checking a multi-signature revocation registry, and includes procedures for key rotation. Revocation checks matter because a signature that was valid when issued should not automatically be trusted forever after a key is compromised or retired.

This is a proposed protocol flow, not proof that a crawler is honest, that all crawlers will implement the checks, or that a permission statement settles legal rights. AIFeed also warns that compromise of both the origin and DNS on first contact is not detectable by its described trust model: an attacker controlling both could potentially present a consistent but malicious first-contact view.

What content does AIFeed carry?

The repository describes two Markdown profiles: native AIFeed Markdown, served as text/aifeed+markdown, and MAKO compatibility, served as text/mako+markdown. The aim is to provide agent-ready content without requiring a consumer to interpret every page as a full HTML document.

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A signed delta index is also intended to let agents identify unchanged pages and avoid transferring them again. This could reduce repeated transfers when a site changes only partially, but the size of any saving depends on the site, the client’s compliance with the protocol, and the comparison method.

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How AIFeed differs from robots.txt, Web Bot Auth, and siteai.json

These mechanisms address related but distinct questions: which paths a crawler may fetch, whether a request is associated with an agent identity, what content-use permission a publisher declares, and what actions an agent may take on a site.

Mechanism Main question Scope and qualification
robots.txt Which URL paths may a compliant crawler access? Google describes its rules as crawler path guidance scoped to a host, protocol, and port. It is not a cryptographic content license or proof of crawler identity.
Web Bot Auth Is a signed HTTP request associated with an agent identity? Google describes its deployment as experimental, says only some requests are signed, and advises retaining IP-based verification as a fallback. Request authentication is not, by itself, a general content-permission vocabulary.
AIFeed What signed, domain-anchored content-use permissions and agent-ready feed does the project propose? A draft project proposal; its repository says external cryptographic review and a live pilot are pending.
A2WF siteai.json What actions may an agent perform on a website, such as filling forms or making transactions? The Agent-to-Web Framework specification is work in progress. It distinguishes action policies from robots.txt URL-crawling rules.

Identity and permission are separate axes. A signed request can help a site assess who is making a request, but it does not automatically grant a right to train on, quote, or retrieve the content. A signed publisher declaration can state intended terms, but does not authenticate every incoming crawler request.

OpenAI’s crawler documentation is one example of why purpose-specific controls matter: it distinguishes OAI-SearchBot, used for ChatGPT search; GPTBot, which may crawl content used to improve generative AI foundation models; and ChatGPT-User, associated with user-initiated fetches rather than automatic crawling. OpenAI says robots.txt settings for OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot are independent. This is a platform-specific example, not evidence that all crawler operators offer equivalent controls. See OpenAI’s crawler overview.

What performance figures has the project reported?

The AIFeed repository reports the following results from reproducible benchmark artifacts. Its stated benchmark environment is a single machine using loopback networking and a synthetic 60-page corpus; the figures are local project results, not independent reproductions or live field measurements.

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Reported result Context and qualification
68.83% fewer transferred bytes Project-reported benchmark for converting HTML to Markdown profiles, using the stated local synthetic test context.
95.73% fewer bytes Project-reported benchmark for delta consumption when 10% of pages changed, compared with an HTML crawl, in the stated local synthetic test context.
0.70 ms signature verification per page Project-reported benchmark in the stated local synthetic test context.
55.19% lower publisher egress bytes; 56.23% lower CPU; 88.24% fewer peak connections Project-reported simulation results.
54.84% fewer received bytes across profiles; 72.93% fewer for a compliant client Project-reported simulation results.
14 of 18 unchanged pages skipped Project-reported simulation result.

The repository says its 30-day live pilot has not run. The reported measurements therefore describe local benchmarks and simulations, not demonstrated production savings or adoption.

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What is implemented, and what remains unproven?

The repository labels the release 1.0.0-draft and says the specifications are not frozen. It reports conformance vectors, JavaScript and Python verifiers, PHP differential fixtures, fuzz executions, and a WordPress end-to-end test. Those are project-reported implementation and test activities; they should not be read as an external cryptographic audit or validation from a live deployment.

The project lists a JavaScript CLI, an @aifeed/verify package, a Python verifier, an MCP server, build plugins, a WordPress plugin, and a local publisher app. The repository’s stated status is that external cryptographic review and a live pilot are pending. This leaves open practical questions about interoperability, operational key management, agent uptake, and how implementations handle errors or stale revocation information.

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What should publishers and agents evaluate before relying on it?

  • Protocol maturity: The draft may change, so publishers should account for compatibility changes before building long-lived workflows around its current wire formats.
  • Key and DNS operations: A publisher needs a reliable process for protecting signing keys, publishing DNS records, rotating keys, and making revocation information available. A compromised first-contact origin and DNS remain a stated weakness.
  • Agent support: A machine-readable permission has practical effect only when agents discover, verify, and honor it. The repository does not establish broad adoption.
  • Legal meaning: Cryptographic verification can help establish that a declaration is associated with a domain and has not been altered, but the available project description does not establish that the declaration alone creates or resolves legal permissions.
  • Evidence quality: Local benchmarks can show behavior under their stated conditions, but they do not establish real-world bandwidth reductions, security under adversarial deployment, or production readiness.

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