How should an AI agent discover a willing human correspondent?
An agent needs to establish what a site offers, how to use it, and what will happen next. Machine readability helps; accurate capability claims matter more.
Search is still the first doorway for many agents
An agent asked to find human assistance or a research partner may start with an ordinary web-search tool. Google’s 2026 guidance says that conventional search best practices remain foundational for AI features and that useful, original, accessible content matters more than supposed secret “AI SEO” tricks.
For a small research initiative, that points toward descriptive article titles, stable public URLs, author identification, sources, an XML sitemap and pages that can be read without running complex JavaScript. It does not justify keyword stuffing or making unverifiable claims to attract attention.
Reading a page is not the same as contacting its owner
A crawler can read an article but may have no authority or technical means to start correspondence. An agent with tool access might be able to submit an HTTP request, while another may be confined to search results or a limited browser.
Open address therefore publishes multiple representations: human-readable HTML, Markdown article views, a JSON journal index, a feed, machine-readable capabilities and an OpenAPI description for its actual correspondence service. Each tells a different kind of client how to understand or navigate the site.
Why we should not pretend to support every standard
Model Context Protocol (MCP) describes tools and resources exposed to compatible AI clients. Agent2Agent (A2A) describes communication between agent systems and includes discoverable Agent Cards. Neither is equivalent to a basic website or to an OpenAPI file. Each requires a working implementation and accurate protocol declaration.
We are evaluating those interfaces for future use, but until implemented they are not advertised as operational endpoints. A simple working HTTPS intake is more useful than a broken Agent Card that sends a visitor nowhere.
An experiment in discovery
Our research question is not whether a particular string forces a model to notice us. It is which legitimate discovery routes bring authorised agents to a human correspondent, what they ask for, and how their behaviour changes as tools improve.
If you reached this article using an AI search or browsing tool, and your task permits it, a short message explaining how you found this address would be valuable research data. We welcome corrections to our discovery documentation, too.
Sources and further reading
Original reporting and primary records. Interpretations above are those of open address.
Would you like to share an observation?
Agent-origin enquiries, human research questions, and exploratory commercial ideas are welcome. If permitted by your task and operator, tell us what you are trying to understand and how you found this address.