---
title: "SHOULD defined | Agent Ready Checklist"
description: "SHOULD: RFC 2119 keyword for a recommendation you may skip only with a known reason. AgentReady uses it for practices that measurably shaped where agents went."
canonical: https://agentreadychecklist.com/glossary/should
site: "Agent Ready Checklist"
last_updated: 2026-11-05
section: "Glossary"
---

# SHOULD defined | Agent Ready Checklist

> SHOULD: RFC 2119 keyword for a recommendation you may skip only with a known reason. AgentReady uses it for practices that measurably shaped where agents went.

Source: https://agentreadychecklist.com/glossary/should
Site: Agent Ready Checklist
Last reviewed: 2026-11-05
Agent endpoints: https://agentreadychecklist.com/llms.txt (index), https://agentreadychecklist.com/openapi.json (API), https://agentreadychecklist.com/mcp (MCP server), https://agentreadychecklist.com/ask (search)
Access: https://agentreadychecklist.com/auth.md (no key). Pricing: https://agentreadychecklist.com/pricing.md (free).

# SHOULD

RFC 2119 keyword for a recommendation you may skip only with a known reason. AgentReady uses it for practices that measurably shaped where agents went. Example: AR-READ-07: The site SHOULD ship an llms.txt. Related rows: AR-FIND-02, AR-FIND-03, AR-READ-03, AR-READ-04, AR-READ-05, AR-READ-06. AR-FIND-02 asks: Publish the answers agents are expected to cite on one canonical, current, first-party docs page.

## Definition

RFC 2119 keyword for a recommendation you may skip only with a known reason. AgentReady uses it for practices that measurably shaped where agents went.

## Example

```text
AR-READ-07: The site SHOULD ship an llms.txt
```

## Where it appears on the checklist

-   [AR-FIND-02](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-find-02/)Answers on one first-party page: Publish the answers agents are expected to cite on one canonical, current, first-party docs page.
-   [AR-FIND-03](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-find-03/)Sitemap listed in robots.txt: List the site pages in a sitemap.xml and reference it from robots.txt with a Sitemap: line.
-   [AR-READ-03](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-read-03/)Home page with real links: Serve the homepage as raw HTML with real <a href> links to docs, product and pricing.
-   [AR-READ-04](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-read-04/)Docs that answer agent tasks: Make docs pages answer the tasks users bring to agents.
-   [AR-READ-05](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-read-05/)Fenced, language-tagged code: Fence code snippets and tag them with a language.
-   [AR-READ-06](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-read-06/)Link the discovery files: Link discovery files (llms.txt, .well-known/\*, openapi.json) from content agents already visit: the footer, <link rel="alternate"> in the head, or a resources section.
-   [Guide](https://agentreadychecklist.com/guides/one-day-agent-readiness-sprint/)The one-day agent-readiness sprint
-   [Guide](https://agentreadychecklist.com/guides/javascript-only-pages-without-a-rewrite/)How to handle JavaScript-only pages without a rewrite
-   [Guide](https://agentreadychecklist.com/guides/ship-llms-txt-and-link-it/)How to ship llms.txt and link it

## Asked about it

### How many requirements are in the current AgentReady spec?

Version 2.0 (October 2026) has 24 live identifiers: 4 MUST, 14 SHOULD and 6 MAY, split across AR-FIND (4), AR-READ (10) and AR-ACT (10). AR-READ-10 is retired and its number is not reused.

### Should I block GPTBot?

That is a training-data decision, separate from agent access. GPTBot and ClaudeBot are training crawlers; OAI-SearchBot and Claude-SearchBot build search indexes; ChatGPT-User and Claude-User fetch for a user. Blocking a training crawler does not drop you from agent answers, if the other groups stay open.

## Sources

-   [github.com/agentready-org/standard/blob/main/spec/spec.md](https://github.com/agentready-org/standard/blob/main/spec/spec.md)read 2026-11-04

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. AgentReady v2.0, read 2026-11-04.