ai-agent-manifest.json: Give AI Your Official Brand Identity
What Is ai-agent-manifest.json?
Your Official Declaration
A JSON file at /.well-known/ai-agent-manifest.json that declares who you are, what you do, and how AI should identify you.
Machine-Readable Identity
Not prose for humans. Structured data for AI agents — entity disambiguation, verified services, API endpoints, and companion file locations.
Without this file, AI models reconstruct your identity from fragments — third-party reviews, competitor comparisons, outdated articles, and whatever else was in the training data. The result is often wrong: misattributed features, incorrect categories, and conflated brand identities.
The /.well-known/ directory is the established convention for machine-readable service discovery (used by Apple, Google, and Let's Encrypt). Placing your manifest here signals to AI agents that this is your official, canonical identity declaration.
You can see Optimly's own manifest as a reference for what a production file looks like.
What Problem It Solves
Without a manifest
AI reconstructs your identity from whatever it finds — third-party mentions, competitor comparison pages, old press releases. You have zero control over how models identify you. And when your brand name is common or similar to another company? Models conflate them.
With ai-agent-manifest.json
You declare your canonical identity in a machine-readable format that AI agents can discover at a well-known path. Entity disambiguation prevents conflation. Verified URLs let agents cross-reference claims. It's your brand passport for the AI web.
The Template
A production-ready template based on Optimly's own manifest. Replace the placeholder values with your brand's facts.
{
"schema_version": "1.0",
"name": "Your Brand Name",
"legal_name": "Your Legal Entity Name, Inc.",
"description": "One-sentence description of what your company does.",
"url": "https://your-domain.com",
"logo": "https://your-domain.com/logo.png",
"founded": "YYYY",
"headquarters": "City, State, Country",
"category": "Your industry category",
"topics": [
"topic-1",
"topic-2",
"topic-3"
],
"audience": [
"Primary audience 1",
"Primary audience 2"
],
"value_propositions": [
"Core value proposition 1",
"Core value proposition 2",
"Core value proposition 3"
],
"services": [
{
"name": "Service or Product Name",
"description": "What this service does",
"url": "https://your-domain.com/product"
}
],
"entity_disambiguation": {
"not_affiliated_with": [
"Similar-sounding company or product"
],
"also_known_as": [
"Alternative name or abbreviation"
],
"parent_company": null,
"subsidiaries": []
},
"founders": [
{
"name": "Founder Name",
"role": "CEO",
"linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/in/founder"
}
],
"social_profiles": {
"linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/company/your-brand",
"twitter": "https://x.com/your-brand"
},
"api_endpoints": {
"brand_profile": "https://your-domain.com/api/brand",
"openapi_spec": "https://your-domain.com/openapi.json"
},
"companion_files": {
"llms_txt": "https://your-domain.com/llms.txt",
"llms_full_txt": "https://your-domain.com/llms-full.txt",
"robots_txt": "https://your-domain.com/robots.txt",
"sitemap": "https://your-domain.com/sitemap.xml"
},
"last_updated": "YYYY-MM-DD"
}Design Decisions
Common Mistakes
Putting it at the wrong path
The file must live at /.well-known/ai-agent-manifest.json — not at /ai-agent-manifest.json or /manifest.json. The .well-known directory is a convention for machine-readable service discovery, and it's where AI agents look first.
Omitting entity disambiguation
If your brand name could be confused with another company (and most can), the entity_disambiguation field is critical. Without it, AI models may conflate your brand with similarly-named entities — a problem that compounds over time.
Stale data that contradicts your site
A manifest that says 'analytics platform' while your homepage says 'intelligence platform' creates conflicting signals. Models notice contradictions and reduce confidence in both sources. Keep your manifest current.
No services or API links
The services and api_endpoints fields tell AI agents what your brand actually does — with machine-readable URLs they can verify. Without them, the manifest is identity without evidence.
The AI Discoverability Stack
Four files. One system. Together they control how AI models discover, read, and represent your brand. See the full series →
Implementation Checklist
Download the ai-agent-manifest.json template
Fill in your brand identity fields (name, description, category)
Add entity disambiguation — who you are NOT
List your services with descriptions and URLs
Add API endpoints if you have public APIs
Link your companion files (llms.txt, sitemap, etc.)
Create the /.well-known/ directory if it doesn't exist
Upload to /.well-known/ai-agent-manifest.json
Validate the JSON (no trailing commas, valid syntax)
See What AI Believes About Your Brand
Your manifest declares who you are. But what are AI models actually telling your buyers? Search our directory to find out.