Last Mile · The maturity model
Four dimensions of agent readiness
Two axes to find & read you (Discoverability, Understanding) and two to act. Acting is split by the money line: Interaction — the agent provides inputs and performs unpaid actions — and, below the line, Transaction — money-moving actions with payment and trust. Best practices are the behaviors; standards are the specs that implement them.
The four dimensions of agent readiness
Standard status Established Emerging Experimental — caution, low-cost bet only
| Dimension | What it means | Example agent tasks | Best practices | Standards | Deciding signal · how we test it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Discoverability Do agents find you? | What it meansAgents find your site and your capabilities — content as well as the tools and actions you expose. | Example agent tasks
| Best practices
| Standards robots.txt Sitemap Link headers DNS-AID MCP Server Card API Catalog OAuth discovery Web Bot Auth llms.txt Agent Skills identity.json | Deciding signal · how we test it Discoverability A real agent is prompted for the task — does the airline (or its function) surface and get reached at all? |
Understanding Can agents read you? | What it meansAn agent can read, parse and comprehend you — offers, rules, returned results — accessibility plus structure. | Example agent tasks
| Best practices
| Standards Markdown negotiation schema.org / JSON-LD NDC WAI-ARIA WCAG HTML5 Core Web Vitals | Deciding signal · how we test it Structured Path · Input legibility · Error legibility Can the agent parse offers and read the inputs and errors, or is content locked in JS / PDFs? |
Interaction Can agents operate you? (unpaid) | What it meansThe agent actively operates you — supplies inputs, runs searches, fills forms and performs account actions that don't move money. | Example agent tasks
| Best practices
| Standards WebMCP MCP (actions) OAuth Protected Resource | Deciding signal · how we test it Unpaid task completion · Failure recovery Does the agent complete a search, check-in or selection end to end — recovering from errors — with no human handoff? |
| Money line — everything below moves real money | |||||
Transaction Can agents pay? (the highest bar) | What it meansThe agent completes money-moving actions on the customer's behalf — with payment, agent auth and trust. Depends on Interaction. | Example agent tasks
| Best practices
| Standards ACP UCP x402 MPP AP2 NDC OrderCreate | Deciding signal · how we test it Paid task completion Does a verified agent complete a real paid booking end to end — payment cleared — with no human in the loop? |
v2 · Actionability split by the money line into Interaction (unpaid) & Transaction (paid)