AgentPress

robots.txt told crawlers what to crawl. llms.txt told LLMs what to read. agents.txt tells autonomous AI agents what they're allowed to do.

AgentPress drops an agents.txt and the supporting machine-readable surfaces into any repo in under 60 seconds, so coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Devin, Aider, Continue, Replit Agent) know what's allowed, what's prohibited, and what requires human approval.

Install

npm install -g @agent_press/agentpress
agentpress init

Python fallback:

pip install agentpress-static
agentpress init

What agentpress init does

In one interactive minute it adds:

• agents.txt at the repo root — the human + machine-readable contract
• .well-known/agentpress.json — structured entrypoint map for tools
• .well-known/ai-ingestion.json — crawler/agent ingestion policy
• agentpress/agent-instructions.json — operating contract with allowed/prohibited/requires-human-approval boundaries
• GitHub Action template — CI lint that fails PRs which violate the contract
• README badge — proof of adoption that links back to AgentPress

CLI

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | agentpress init | Interactive wizard to drop agents.txt + supporting files | | agentpress lint . | Validate the agent-readable surfaces; CI-friendly (exit 0/1, --json) | | agentpress doctor | Health check — verify install, files, schema validity | | agentpress receipt | Generate a cryptographic proof receipt that an agent ran a check |

The safety contract

Every agents.txt declares three sets of actions:

• Allowed — agents may do these without asking. (read code, run tests, file PRs)
• Requires human approval — agents must pause for sign-off. (schema migrations, billing changes, deploys)
• Prohibited — agents must refuse. (secret exfiltration, deceptive tracking, bypassing 2FA)

This is the contract. AgentPress generates it, validates it, and gives you receipts.

Why now

Coding agents are landing PRs in 2026. Most repos have no machine-readable answer to "what's safe?" agents.txt is the answer — same lineage as robots.txt, sitemap.xml, llms.txt. Adopt early, sleep better.

Add the badge

Once you've run agentpress init, drop the badge into your README:

[![agents.txt](https://img.shields.io/badge/agents.txt-v1.0-2563eb?style=flat-square&logo=githubactions&logoColor=white)](https://github.com/barneywohl/agentpress)

→ See docs/BADGE.md for variants. Then submit yours to the registry.

Live endpoints

• Site: https://agentpress.pages.dev/
• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@agent_press/agentpress
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/agentpress-static/
• Spec: docs/AGENTSTXT_SPEC.md
• Registry: registry/ (live: https://agentpress.pages.dev/registry/)
• GitHub Action: actions/setup-action
• Reference parsers: @agent_press/core (TS) · agentpress-core (Python)

License

MIT. See LICENSE.