Open standard · v0.1.0

The agentic-first profile standard.

A small, well-versioned JSON contract that companies and individuals publish at a known location on their own website. Agents and directories discover it without scraping. There are two tiers — public for discovery, and protected for diligence-grade detail behind your own auth.

Why this exists

Three things are happening at once: agents are becoming the primary consumer of company information; the existing structured-data conventions (Schema.org, OpenGraph) describe content but not capability; and the people best placed to describe a company are the company itself, not a third-party data broker. The agentic-first standard fills that gap with a small, opinionated JSON contract you publish on your own domain.

It is deliberately not an attempt to model everything. It is the smallest schema that lets a serious investor, customer, or LLM agent decide whether to go further. Anything richer belongs on the protected tier, which the publisher controls entirely.

Public vs protected, in one table

In schema files the tier is set explicitly with the tier field ("public" or "protected") and the kind of subject with profile_kind ("company" or "person"). This makes the same parser robust against either file showing up at either location.

Company · public profile public

Hosted at https://{your-domain}/.well-known/agentic-profile.json. Validates against company-profile-0.1.0. All numerical metrics use bands. Evidence URLs are strongly encouraged on every material claim and feed the directory's confidence score.

Required fields

Recommended fields

Example

{
  "schema_version": "0.1.0",
  "updated_at": "2026-04-19T00:00:00Z",
  "profile_kind": "company",
  "tier": "public",
  "company": {
    "name": "Acme Robotics",
    "legal_name": "Acme Robotics Ltd",
    "website": "https://acme-robotics.example",
    "jurisdiction": "GB",
    "registry": {
      "type": "companies-house",
      "id": "12345678",
      "url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12345678"
    },
    "founded": "2022-03",
    "industry": ["robotics", "b2b-saas", "industrial-automation"],
    "tagline": "Vision-language models for warehouse pick-and-place."
  },
  "stage": { "current": "Seed", "since": "2025-02" },
  "funding": {
    "total_raised_band": "1m-5m",
    "currency": "GBP",
    "last_round": {
      "stage": "Seed", "date": "2025-02",
      "amount_band": "1m-5m", "currency": "GBP",
      "lead_investor": "Northern Gravity",
      "evidence_url": "https://acme-robotics.example/news/seed-round"
    }
  },
  "team": { "headcount_band": "11-50" },
  "metrics": {
    "revenue_band": "100k-500k",
    "growth_band": "100-300%",
    "as_of": "2026-03-31"
  },
  "contact": {
    "preferred_channel": "form",
    "form_url": "https://acme-robotics.example/contact",
    "private_mcp": "https://private-mcp.acme-robotics.example/mcp"
  }
}

Download the full example →

Company · protected profile protected

Lives behind your own MCP server, behind your own authentication (typically OAuth 2.0 with scopes per section). The directory never sees this. Validates against company-private-profile-0.1.0.

Sections

Example shape

{
  "schema_version": "0.1.0",
  "updated_at": "2026-04-19T09:30:00Z",
  "profile_kind": "company",
  "tier": "protected",
  "financials": {
    "currency": "GBP", "as_of": "2026-03-31",
    "revenue": 287400, "arr": 410000,
    "gross_margin_pct": 71.2, "runway_months": 14
  },
  "traction": {
    "customer_count": 38,
    "logos": [
      { "name": "Northern Fulfilment Group", "nda": false },
      { "name": "RedShield Logistics", "nda": true }
    ],
    "churn_pct": 4.2, "nps": 47
  },
  "fundraise": {
    "active": true, "instrument": "Equity",
    "ask": 4000000, "currency": "GBP",
    "valuation_target": 18000000,
    "use_of_funds": "Hire 4 senior ML engineers, scale to 80 sites…",
    "data_room_url": "https://dataroom.acme-robotics.example",
    "close_target_date": "2026-09-30"
  }
}

Download the full example →

Personal · public profile public

Same hosting convention as the company tier: https://{your-domain}/.well-known/agentic-profile.json, with profile_kind: "person". For founders, NEDs, advisors, consultants, fractional leaders, and anyone whose engagements are ad-hoc and discoverable. Public-tier personal profiles deliberately omit precise compensation, calendar links, and live engagement state — those go on the protected tier.

Required fields

Recommended fields

Example

{
  "schema_version": "0.1.0",
  "updated_at": "2026-04-19T00:00:00Z",
  "profile_kind": "person",
  "tier": "public",
  "person": {
    "name": "Jane Lawson",
    "headline": "Independent NED · former CFO at Series-B SaaS",
    "location": { "city": "London", "country": "GB" },
    "expertise": ["finance", "audit-committee", "saas-metrics", "fintech-regulation"]
  },
  "current_roles": [
    {
      "title": "Independent Non-Executive Director",
      "organisation": "Glassbridge Capital",
      "since": "2024-06"
    }
  ],
  "past_roles_band": "5+",
  "credentials": [
    { "type": "ICAEW", "evidence_url": "https://find.icaew.com/example" }
  ],
  "links": {
    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/example-jane-lawson"
  },
  "contact": {
    "preferred_channel": "form",
    "form_url": "https://janelawson.example/contact",
    "private_mcp": "https://private-mcp.janelawson.example/mcp"
  }
}

Download the full example →

Personal · protected profile protected

Served from your private MCP, behind your auth, to principals you've explicitly authorised. Designed for the engagement-discovery use case: a recruiter, board chair, or portfolio CEO has been told about you, visits your public profile, requests access, and is then handed back the protected payload below.

Sections

Example shape

{
  "schema_version": "0.1.0",
  "updated_at": "2026-04-19T09:30:00Z",
  "profile_kind": "person",
  "tier": "protected",
  "engagement": {
    "available": true,
    "type": ["non-exec", "advisory", "fractional"],
    "day_rate": { "amount": 1800, "currency": "GBP" },
    "advisory_equity_pct_band": "0.1-0.5%",
    "availability_hours_per_week": 6,
    "next_availability": "2026-07-01"
  },
  "career": {
    "experience": [
      {
        "title": "CFO", "organisation": "Helix Analytics",
        "from": "2018-04", "to": "2023-09",
        "outcomes": ["ARR 12.8x in 5y", "GM 58% → 74%", "Exit at 8x ARR multiple"]
      }
    ]
  },
  "contact_private": {
    "email": "jane@janelawson.example",
    "calendar_url": "https://cal.example/jane/intro"
  }
}

Download the full example →

Where to put it (the URI)

Canonical: https://{your-domain}/.well-known/agentic-profile.json

The /.well-known/ path prefix is the IETF-standardised home for site-wide metadata under RFC 8615 (2019, obsoletes RFC 5785). It is the same convention used by security.txt, OAuth's openid-configuration, Apple's app-site-association, ACME challenges, WebFinger, and others — and it is where the AI ecosystem is converging too.

Fallbacks

• Root fallback: if your host won't serve files under /.well-known/, the directory will also accept https://{your-domain}/agentic-profile.json. Discovery prefers the well-known path when both exist.
• Pointer mode: if you'd rather serve from a public MCP than a static file, the well-known file may instead point at the MCP:

  {
    "schema_version": "0.1.0",
    "public_mcp": "https://public-mcp.your-domain.example/mcp",
    "owner_proof": "dns-txt"
  }

• DNS TXT (v0.2): _agentic-profile.your-domain.example TXT "mcp=https://…" for the same purpose, useful when you don't control HTTP routing.

Related conventions, and why agentic-first is its own slot

We did the survey before picking a name. Four adjacent conventions already exist; each describes a different thing.

The first four describe protocol or content; agentic-first describes the publisher. They are complementary, and adopters are encouraged to publish whichever combination fits. A company that runs an MCP server, has an A2A agent, and wants its corporate identity discoverable would publish all three.

We will pursue an IANA provisional registration for agentic-profile.json alongside the v0.2 schema bump, following the same path the A2A protocol took to its permanent registration.

Belt-and-braces: also embed Schema.org JSON-LD

Search engines and most current LLM crawlers still look for Schema.org Organization (or Person) JSON-LD on your home page. Drop it in a <script type="application/ld+json"> block alongside your agentic-profile file. The two are not in conflict — Schema.org is for SEO + general discovery, agentic-first is for agent-native diligence.

How to host it

Vanilla static HTML / Apache / Nginx / Caddy

Drop the file at the canonical path in your document root. Most web servers will serve /.well-known/ by default; the only thing worth checking is the Content-Type header, which should be application/json.

# Apache .htaccess (only needed if your host blocks dotfiles by default)
<Files "agentic-profile.json">
  Header set Content-Type "application/json"
</Files>

# Nginx
location = /.well-known/agentic-profile.json {
  default_type application/json;
  add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=300";
}

# Caddy
@profile path /.well-known/agentic-profile.json
header @profile Content-Type application/json
header @profile Cache-Control "public, max-age=300"

Vercel / Netlify / Cloudflare Pages

Place the file at public/.well-known/agentic-profile.json (Next.js, Vite, Nuxt) or static/.well-known/agentic-profile.json (SvelteKit, Astro), then deploy. All three platforms serve /.well-known/ paths transparently.

Squarespace

Squarespace is the trickiest of the popular hosts because it does not let you upload arbitrary files to a path beginning with a dot, and its file-storage URLs aren't user-controllable. There are three practical workarounds in increasing order of robustness:

Option 1 — Cloudflare Worker in front (recommended)

Put your domain behind Cloudflare (DNS-only or full proxy), then deploy a one-file Worker that serves the static JSON for the well-known path and falls through to Squarespace for everything else. This gives you the canonical URL and a proper Content-Type, with no Squarespace surgery.

// Cloudflare Worker — serve /.well-known/agentic-profile.json,
// fall through to Squarespace for everything else.
const PROFILE = JSON.stringify({
  /* paste your profile here */
});

export default {
  async fetch(request) {
    const url = new URL(request.url);
    if (url.pathname === "/.well-known/agentic-profile.json") {
      return new Response(PROFILE, {
        headers: {
          "content-type": "application/json",
          "cache-control": "public, max-age=300",
        },
      });
    }
    return fetch(request);
  },
};

Option 2 — URL Mapping to a hidden code-block page

Squarespace's Settings → Advanced → URL Mappings can 301-redirect /.well-known/agentic-profile.json to a normal page (e.g. /agentic-profile) that contains a Code Block holding the JSON. The downside: the response is HTML wrapping the JSON, and you can't set the Content-Type header. Some validators tolerate this; the agentic-first directory will accept it but warns about the wrong content type.

Option 3 — Subdomain on a static host

Set profile.your-domain.com as a CNAME to a free static host (Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, Netlify) and serve the file from there. Then in your agentic-profile, set company.website to your real Squarespace URL and rely on the directory's domain-pointer convention. This is fully spec-compliant but adds one more thing to operate.

Validate & submit

Once your file is live, point the directory at it. The submit_website tool runs the full validator (structural + semantic + cross-reference + temporal) against your domain and either indexes you or returns a structured error report.

curl -sS -X POST https://directory.agentic-first.co/mcp \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call",
       "params":{"name":"submit_website",
                 "arguments":{"domain":"your-domain.example"}}}'

Or call submit_website from any MCP-aware client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, …) pointed at https://directory.agentic-first.co/mcp.

Versioning & governance

The schema is SemVer'd. Breaking changes bump the major version and come with a 90-day deprecation window during which both versions validate. Minor and patch versions are additive only and never reject previously valid documents. Schema files are immutably versioned at stable URLs:

• https://directory.agentic-first.co/schemas/company-profile-{version}.json
• https://directory.agentic-first.co/schemas/company-private-profile-{version}.json
• https://directory.agentic-first.co/schemas/personal-profile-{version}.json
• https://directory.agentic-first.co/schemas/personal-private-profile-{version}.json

All four are served with application/schema+json and long-lived immutable cache headers — the URL itself is versioned, so the bytes never change.

Decisions of consequence are recorded as ADRs in the pitch-mcp/docs/adr directory of the directory's source. Disputes about a published profile go through the directory's dispute flow (Phase 5).