This page aims to document Python protocols and usage (e.g. cloud, desktop).
Looking for Javascript/Typescript instructions?
The Agentic Web Protocol, or AWP, allows AI agents to reliably understand and interact with the web.
It is composed of two protocols, for web pages and APIs, allowing them to be usable by AI agents.
A standard Universal Tool is also provided, for AI agents to be able to instantly leverage AWP compliant pages and APIs.
🤖 Discoverable Websites and APIs, for AI Agents interactions. spacehendrix
Learn more about how to support AWP, by clicking the most appropriate option for you:
I make websites or APIs, what do I need to do?
- See the
AWPProtocol Specifications below, and familiarize yourself with the standardaiparameters - Add the appropriate
aiparameters to your website.
🎉 Your website can be reliably used by any AI agent!
- See the
AWPProtocol Specifications below, and familiarize yourself with the standard/ai-handshakeendpoint - Add the standard
/ai-handshakeendpoint to your API.
🎉 Your API can be reliably used by any AI agent!
I make/use AI Agents, what do I need to do?
- See the
AWPTool below, and familiarize yourself with itsparse_htmlandparse_apimethods. - Add the
AWPTool to your AI Agent.
🎉 Your AI agent can now reliably use any
AWPcompliant websites or APIs!
Would you rather chat with our docs? 💬
Note: AI responses may include mistakes. Refer to the documentation below for sample code.
Protocol Specifications
Without information about what a web page is for, how it is structured, what features it provides, and how to interact with it, an AI agent has to figure out everything on its own.
This is commonly done through scrappers and/or vision models aimed at guessing what the agent sees.
Websites being diverse, complex, dynamic, Javascript-heavy and often moslty made of generic
<div>s, this exercise commonly leads to unreliable parsing and broken/unintended interactions.Intelligent agents need richer semantic hints to parse and interact with these pages reliably.
The premise of AWP is simple: include standard information in the HTML page itself, for any agent to be able to reliably understand and interact with it.
For an agent to so, the following information needs to be attached to meaninful and/or interactive HTML tags:
- A
description, for it to know what it is. - A list of possible
interactions, for it to know what to do. - A list of
prerequisites, for it to know what to do prior to interacting. - A list of subsequent
features, for it to know what those interactions lead to.
Additional optional information such as states, or established accessibility parameters (eg. role, aria-*) may also be used to complement the agent's understanding of the page.
Let's start with a simple example. Your agent just found this website by crawling the web:
<html><body><form>
This site uses cookies
<button>Configure</button></form><form><h1> Website name </h1><label> What's next? </label><inputtype="text"
name="destination"
requiredminlength="3"
maxlength="30"/><div><buttondisabled> -></button><button> Back </button></div></form></body></html>It now needs to understand what it is for, to know if it can be used to answer your query, and if so, how to interact with it?
For all reasons described above, this often becomes a difficult and error-prone task —leading to unintended behaviors and impairing the agent's ability to act reliably on our behalf.
With AWP, this information is now declared in the HTML itself, through standard optionalai-* attributes.
<htmlai-description="Travel site to book flights and trains"><body><form>
This site uses cookies
<button>Configure</button></form><formai-description="Form to book a flight"><h1>
Website name
</h1><label>
What's next?
</label><inputai-ref="<input-ai-ref>"
ai-description="Form input where to enter the destination"
ai-interactions="input: enables the form confirmation button, given certain constraints;"
type="text"
name="destination"
requiredminlength="3"
maxlength="30"/><div><buttonai-description="Confirmation button to proceed with booking a flight"
ai-interactions="click: proceed; hover: diplay additonal information about possible flights;"
ai-prerequisite-click="<input-ai-ref>: input the destination;"
ai-next-click="list of available flights; book a flight; login;"
disabled>
-></button><buttonai-description="Cancel button to get back to the home page"
ai-interactions="click: dismiss form and return to home page;"
ai-next-click="access forms to book trains; access forms to book flights;">
Back
</button></div></form></body></html>The web app can now be reliably understood and used by any AI agents 🙌
| Parameter | Description | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
ai-description | A natural language description for agents to know what the element is | • Meaningful Element: required• Interactive Element: required• Other Element: absent |
ai-interactions | A list of possible interactions, for agents to know what to do with the element Format: <interaction>: <behavior>; <interaction>: <behavior>;.. | • Meaningful Element: absent• Interactive Element: required• Other Element: absent |
ai-prerequisite-<interaction> | A list of prerequisite interactions, for agents to know what to do prior to interacting with the element Format: <ai-ref>: <interaction>;.. | • Meaningful Element: absent• Interactive Element: optional• Other Element: absent |
ai-ref | A unique identifier for agents to know where those prerequisite interactions should be made | • Meaningful Element: absent• Interactive Element: optional• Other Element: absent |
ai-next-<interaction> | A list of subsequent features, for agents to know what those interactions lead to Format: <next feature>; <next feature>;.. | • Meaningful Element: absent• Interactive Element: optional• Other Element: absent |
ai-state | A natural language description of the state the component is in | • Meaningful Element: optional• Interactive Element: optional• Other Element: optional |
An AWP Tool is also distributed by this library to allow any AI agent to reliably use
AWPcompliant websites.
Without information about what an API is for, how it is structured, what features it provides, and how to interact with it, an AI agent has to figure out everything on its own.
This is commonly passed manually as context, fetched via web crawlers attempting to find documentation online, or by spinning up additional middleware servers (eg. mcp) to allow them to be discoverable.
The premise of AWP is simple: include standard information in the API itself, for any agent to be able to reliably understand and interact with it, without requiring additional middleware servers to do so.
For an agent to know how to use any API, the following information needs to be discoverable:
- A list of all each available
endpointson that API, to know what they are - A
descriptionfor each endpoint, to know what they are for metainformation for each endpoint, to know how to access them- An
inputdocumentation for each endpoint, to know what to provide - An
outputdocumentation for each endpoint, to know what to expect
With AWP, the API documentation is made accessible on the API itself, with a standard /ai-handshake endpoint.
This allows AI agents to query /ai-handshake, get a complete description of the API, and know how to further interact with it.
For simplicity, and since it is a well established standard on the web, the AWP expects a OpenAPI compliant documentation to be returned by that endpoint.
Here is a simple example: https://editor.swagger.io
| Path | Description | Type | Method | Input | Output | Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
/ai-handshake | Standard endpoint returning a OpenAPI compliant documentation of the API which hosts the endpoint, excluding /ai-handshake, JSON or YAML based on headers | REST | GET | Headers:"Content-Type": "application/yaml"(recommended)or "Content-Type": "application/json" | OpenAPI compliant documentation, of requested Content-Type (eg. YAML, JSON, text) | required |
An AWP Tool is also distributed by this library to allow any AI agent to reliably use
AWPcompliant API.
AWP Tool
This project also shares a Universal Tool for your agents to be able reliably understand and interact with the AWP compliant Web pages and APIs.
For more information about
Universal Tools, see ◉ Universal Intelligence
pip install awp
# (if using universal tool) Choose relevant UIN install for your device
pip install "universal-intelligence[community,mps]"# Apple
pip install "universal-intelligence[community,cuda]"# NVIDIAimportawp# Get HTML documentationhtml_doc=awp.parse_html(html)
# Get API documentationapi_doc=awp.parse_api(url)| Method | Parameters | Return Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
parse_html | • html: str: HTML page to parse• format: str | None = "YAML": Output format | Any | Parses all AWP ai-* and accessibility attributes on the page and returns a documentation in the requested format (YAML, JSON), usable by any AI agent to reliably understand and interact with that web page |
parse_api | • url: str: URL of the API to parse• authorization: str | None = None: Authentication header if required• format: str | None = "YAML": Output format | Any | Calls the standard /ai-handshake endpoint of that API and returns an OpenAPI compliant documentation of that API in the requested format (YAML, JSON), usable by any AI agent to reliably understand and interact with that API |
fromawpimportUniversalToolasAWP# Get HTML documentationhtml_doc, logs=AWP().parse_html(html)
# Get API documentationapi_doc, logs=AWP().parse_api(url)| Method | Parameters | Return Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
__init__ | • verbose: bool | str = "DEFAULT": Enable/Disable logs, or set a specific log level | None | Initialize a Universal Tool |
parse_html | • html: str: HTML page to parse• format: str | None = "YAML": Output format | Tuple[Any, Dict] | Parses all AWP ai-* and accessibility attributes on the page and returns a documentation in the requested format (YAML, JSON), usable by any AI agent to reliably understand and interact with that web page |
parse_api | • url: str: URL of the API to parse• authorization: str | None = None: Authentication header if required• format: str | None = "YAML": Output format | Tuple[Any, Dict] | Calls the standard /ai-handshake endpoint of that API and returns an OpenAPI compliant documentation of that API in the requested format (YAML, JSON), usable by any AI agent to reliably understand and interact with that API |
(class).contract | None | Contract | Tool description and interface specification |
(class).requirements | None | List[Requirement] | Tool configuration requirements |
<htmlai-description="Travel site to book flights and trains"><body><formai-description="Form to book a flight" ai-state="pending"
class="form-booking-flight"><h1>
Book a flight
</h1><label>
Where to?
</label><inputai-ref="<input-ai-ref>"
ai-description="Form input where to enter the destination"
ai-interactions="input: enables the form confirmation button, given certain constraints;"
role="destination-input"
aria-required="true"
alt="destination input"
type="text"
id="destination"
name="destination"
requiredminlength="3"
maxlength="30"
size="10" /><div><buttonai-description="Confirmation button to proceed with booking a flight"
ai-interactions="click: proceed; hover: diplay additonal information about possible flights;"
ai-prerequisite-click="<input-ai-ref>: input destination;"
ai-next-click="list of available flights; book a flight; login;"
aria-disabled="true"
disabled>
See available flights
</button><buttonai-description="Cancel button to get back to the home page"
ai-interactions="click: dismiss form and return to home page;"
ai-next-click="access forms to book trains; access forms to book flights;">
Back
</button></div></form></body></html>elements:
- selector: htmldescription: Travel site to book flights and trainscontains:
- selector: html body form.form-booking-flightdescription: Form to book a flightstate: pendingcontent: Book a flight Where to?contains:
- selector: html body form.form-booking-flight input#destination[name='destination'][type='text'][role='destination-input']description: Form input where to enter the destinationavailable_interactions:
- type: inputdescription: enables the form confirmation button, given certain constraintsattributes:
name: destinationrole: destination-inputalt: destination inputaria-required: 'true'maxlength: 30minlength: 3required: truetype: text
- selector: html body form.form-booking-flight div buttondescription: Confirmation button to proceed with booking a flightcontent: See available flightsavailable_interactions:
- type: clickdescription: proceedprerequisites:
- selector: html body form.form-booking-flight input#destination[name='destination'][type='text'][role='destination-input']interaction: input destinationnext_features:
- list of available flights
- book a flight
- login
- type: hoverdescription: diplay additonal information about possible flightsattributes:
aria-disabled: 'true'
- selector: html body form.form-booking-flight div button:nth-of-type(2)description: Cancel button to get back to the home pagecontent: Backavailable_interactions:
- type: clickdescription: dismiss form and return to home pagenext_features:
- access forms to book trains
- access forms to book flightsYAML (default) or JSON per requested format.
YAML recommended for improved token efficiency and stability.
GET https//example.api.com/ai-handshake
OpenAPI compliant documentation, YAML (default) or JSON per requested format.
Example available here.
Tip: Tools like Swagger can automatically generate a OpenAPI compliant documentation for your API which you may serve at
/ai-handshake. They usually also provide no-code UIs to display and interact wich that documentation on the web (eg. Swagger UI).
A ready-made playground is available to help familiarize yourself with the AWP protocols and tools.
# Install project dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt # Choose relevant UIN install for your device
pip install "universal-intelligence[community,mps]"# Apple
pip install "universal-intelligence[community,cuda]"# NVIDIA# Run
python -m playground.example 
AWP tool can be used across all platforms (cloud, desktop, web, mobile).
This software is open source, free for everyone, and lives on thanks to the community's support ☕
If you'd like to support to agentic-web-protocol here are a few ways to do so:
- ⭐ Consider leaving a star on this repository to support our team & help with visibility
- 👽 Tell your friends and colleagues
- 📰 Support this project on social medias (e.g. LinkedIn, Youtube, Medium, Reddit)
- ✅ Adopt the
AWPspecification - 💪 Use the AWP Tool
- 💡 Help surfacing/resolving issues
- 💭 Help shape the
AWPspecification - 🔧 Help maintain, test, enhance the AWP Tool
- ✉️ Email us security concerns
- ❤️ Sponsor this project on Github
Apache 2.0 License - spacehendrix