AX Rush

AI readiness of gov.uk

Measured on the home page. Overall grade: Poor.

gov.uk

Poor · 31 passing checks, 21 warnings, 8 failures · 1.9s

ax-audit@3.6.0

LLMs.txt

  • /llms.txt not found

    Create a /llms.txt file at your site root following the llmstxt.org specification. It should be a Markdown file starting with "# Your Site Name" and include a description, sections, and links.

Agent Card (A2A)

  • /.well-known/agent.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/agent.json file following the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol. It should include name, description, url, and skills fields describing your site's capabilities.

OpenAPI Spec

  • /.well-known/openapi.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/openapi.json file with your API specification following the OpenAPI 3.x standard. See https://swagger.io/specification/ for the spec.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

  • /.well-known/mcp.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/mcp.json file describing your MCP server configuration. Include name, description, tools, and version fields. See https://modelcontextprotocol.io for the spec.

AI Well-Known

  • 0/5 emerging AI discovery files published

  • ai.txt not found

    Publish /.well-known/ai.txt declaring opt-in/opt-out signals for AI training. See https://site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt for the format.

  • genai.txt not found

    Publish /.well-known/genai.txt declaring your generative-AI usage policy.

  • ai-plugin.json not found

    Publish /ai-plugin.json (legacy ChatGPT plugin manifest). Schema: name_for_model, description_for_model, api.url. Still consumed by some agents.

  • agents.json not found

    Publish /agents.json describing your site as a callable agent (OpenAgents / Wildcard emerging spec). Includes name, description, and operations[].

  • nlweb.json not found

    Publish /.well-known/nlweb.json (Microsoft NLWeb) so agents can interact with the site through a natural-language interface.

Content NegotiationInformational

  • Homepage does not serve Markdown via content negotiation

    Serve a Markdown representation of your pages when agents request "Accept: text/markdown". Agents like Claude Code and Cursor ask for it, and Markdown cuts token usage by ~80% vs HTML. Cloudflare ("Markdown for Agents") and Vercel can enable this without code changes.

  • No <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> fallback found on the homepage

    If you cannot enable content negotiation, advertise a Markdown version with <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="/index.md"> so agents can discover it.

RSL LicenseInformational

  • No RSL license discovery found

    Declare machine-readable licensing terms for your content with Really Simple Licensing. Add to robots.txt: License: https://your-site.com/license.xml — then publish the RSL document. See https://rslstandard.org.

Structured Data

  • No JSON-LD structured data found

    Add a <script type="application/ld+json"> block in your HTML <head> with schema.org structured data describing your site, organization, or person.

Meta Tags

  • No AI meta tags (ai:*) found

    Add AI meta tags to your HTML <head>: <meta name="ai:summary" content="Brief description">, <meta name="ai:content_type" content="website">, <meta name="ai:author" content="Your Name">.

  • No rel="alternate" link to llms.txt in HTML

    Add to your <head>: <link rel="alternate" type="text/plain" href="/llms.txt" title="LLM-optimized content">

  • No rel="alternate" link to agent.json in HTML

    Add to your <head>: <link rel="alternate" type="application/json" href="/.well-known/agent.json" title="Agent Card">

  • No rel="me" identity links found

    Add rel="me" links to verify your identity across platforms: <link rel="me" href="https://github.com/yourname">, <link rel="me" href="https://twitter.com/yourname">.

  • OpenGraph required tags missing: og:url, og:type

    Add these meta tags: <meta property="og:url" content="...">, <meta property="og:type" content="...">.

  • No Twitter Card meta tags found

    Add twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image so X / Threads / Bluesky / Discord agents render link previews correctly.

Robots.txt

  • /robots.txt exists

  • No core AI crawlers explicitly configured

    Add User-agent entries for core AI crawlers in your robots.txt. For each crawler, add: User-agent: <name> followed by Allow: / on the next line.

  • 1 AI crawler(s) have partial path restrictions

    These crawlers have Disallow rules on specific paths. For full AI access, use only "Allow: /" and let the wildcard User-agent: * handle path restrictions.

  • Sitemap directive present

  • No Content-Signal directive found (optional)

    Declare how crawlers may use your content after access with the Content Signals Policy, e.g.: Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-train=no. Known signals: search, ai-input, ai-train. Generate yours at contentsignals.org.

  • 1/48 known AI crawlers have explicit rules

    Add explicit User-agent entries for more AI crawlers to maximize discoverability.

SEO Basics

  • <title> is too short (17 chars): "Welcome to GOV.UK"

    Lengthen the title to 20-70 characters with a clear topic indicator.

  • Meta description is short (68 chars)

    Expand the description to 70-160 characters with the page's main value proposition.

  • Canonical URL: https://www.gov.uk/

  • <html lang="en">

  • UTF-8 charset declared

  • Viewport meta present: "width=device-width, initial-scale=1"

HTTP Headers

  • All 7 security headers present

  • Link header present but does not reference AI discovery files

    Add AI discovery entries to your Link header: Link: </llms.txt>; rel="alternate"; type="text/plain", </.well-known/agent.json>; rel="alternate"; type="application/json"

TLS / HTTPS

  • Site is served over HTTPS

  • HTTP requests redirect to HTTPS

  • HSTS max-age=31536000

  • HSTS does not include subdomains

    Add includeSubDomains to apply HSTS across api., docs., etc. Required for preload list submission.

  • HSTS has preload directive but does not satisfy preload-list requirements

    Preload requires max-age >= 31536000 and includeSubDomains. See https://hstspreload.org.

Security.txt

  • /.well-known/security.txt exists

  • Required field "Contact" present

  • Required field "Expires" present

  • Expires date is in the future (2026-12-01)

  • 2/5 optional fields present

Sitemap

  • Sitemap located: https://www.gov.uk/sitemap.xml

  • Content-Type is XML (application/xml)

  • Sitemap-index references 35 child sitemap(s)

  • 3/3 sample child sitemap(s) reachable

  • Sample yielded 75000 URL(s) across 3 child(ren)

  • Newest <lastmod> is recent (4 day(s) ago)

Agent AccessInformational

  • All 8 core AI crawler user-agents receive equivalent responses

HTML Rendering

  • Server-rendered content detected (799 words, 5476 chars of visible text)

  • Text-to-markup ratio is healthy (6.4%)

  • Semantic landmarks present (main, section, header, footer, nav)

  • Single <h1> heading: "The best place to find government services and information"

  • 4/4 <img> tags have alt attributes

Crawl EfficiencyInformational

  • Response compressed with Brotli (br)

  • Cache validator present (ETag)

  • Conditional request returns 304 Not Modified

  • Homepage size is reasonable (83.5 KB decompressed)