BridgeToAgent
Get the kit — $49
All posts
Explainer5 min read

The 5-minute install audit — for small businesses who can't read code

A plain-English checklist for site owners who paid for an AI-readiness install and want to verify it actually worked, without learning what curl or HTTP headers or content types mean. Five checks, five minutes, three browser tabs. If any check fails, you know exactly what to ask your developer or your install vendor.

BridgeToAgentEditorial team

The 5-minute install audit — for small businesses who can't read code

If you paid someone to make your site "AI-ready" — your developer, a free generator, a $49 kit like ours, a $5,000 agency engagement — you should be able to verify it actually worked without learning what curl means or how to read HTTP headers.

This post is that verification, in five checks, in plain English. You need a web browser and your domain name. That's it. Each check takes about a minute. If a check fails, the failure tells you exactly what's wrong and who to ask to fix it.

Check 1 — Can your file be downloaded?

In your browser address bar, type your domain followed by /llms.txt — for example, yourdomain.com/llms.txt. Press Enter.

Pass: a plain-text file loads, looking something like:

# Your Company Name

> One-sentence description of your business

## Pages

- [Homepage](https://yourdomain.com/) — what your homepage covers
- [About](https://yourdomain.com/about) — what you do
- [Contact](https://yourdomain.com/contact) — how to reach you

Fail (404 page): the file isn't there. Your install didn't put it where it needs to be. Ask your developer: "The llms.txt file at the root of our domain returns 404 — can you confirm it was uploaded and is publicly accessible?"

Fail (HTML page that looks like your homepage): the file is being routed back to your homepage by your CMS. Ask your developer: "The llms.txt request is being intercepted and routed through our CMS — can you add an exclusion rule so the file is served directly?"

Repeat the same check for yourdomain.com/agents.json and yourdomain.com/agent-instructions.md. Both should load similarly — agents.json will look like structured JSON code; agent-instructions.md will look like a Markdown text file.

Check 2 — Does your homepage have the discovery tags?

Open your homepage in a browser. Right-click on the page → View Page Source (or press Ctrl+U on Windows / Cmd+Option+U on Mac). A new tab opens showing your page's raw HTML.

Press Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F) to open the in-page search. Search for rel="alternate".

Pass: you find at least three matches, and they look something like:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/json" title="Agent Action Map" href="/agents.json">
<link rel="alternate" type="text/plain" title="LLM Context" href="/llms.txt">
<link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" title="Agent Runbook" href="/agent-instructions.md">

Fail (zero matches): the auto-discovery tags aren't in your page. The files exist (from Check 1) but agents reading your homepage have no way to find them. Ask your developer: "Can you add the three <link rel='alternate'> tags pointing to our agents.json, llms.txt, and agent-instructions.md files to the homepage <head>?"

Fail (one or two matches but not all three): partial install. Ask your developer to add the missing ones.

Check 3 — Does your robots.txt list your sitemap?

In your browser, go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt. A short plain-text file should load.

Scan it for a line that starts with Sitemap: followed by a URL.

Pass: you see something like Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

Fail (no Sitemap: line): agents and AI crawlers don't know where your sitemap lives. Ask your developer: "Can you add a Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml line to our robots.txt?"

This is a one-line edit. It takes about 30 seconds. Don't accept "that's complicated."

Check 4 — Does your sitemap load?

In your browser, go to the URL from the Sitemap line in Check 3 — usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. A page should load showing a list of all your pages, formatted as XML (looks like nested tags with URLs inside).

Pass: a list of URLs displays.

Fail (404): your sitemap doesn't exist. Ask your developer: "Can you generate a sitemap.xml for our site?" Most modern CMS platforms (Shopify, WordPress with Yoast, Webflow, Squarespace) generate this automatically — if it's missing, something specific is broken.

Fail (loads but shows zero pages or only the homepage): your sitemap exists but isn't being populated. Ask: "Our sitemap.xml only contains the homepage — can you fix it so it includes all our pages?"

Check 5 — Run the free Lighthouse Agentic Browsing audit

Go to bridgetoagent.com (our homepage). Type your domain into the audit box. Click the audit button.

Wait ~30 seconds. A score comes back.

Pass: 80 or higher on the agent-readiness score.

60-79: install is partially working. Match the audit's specific findings against Checks 1-4 above to find which step is incomplete.

Below 60: the install isn't working. The audit page tells you which specific Lighthouse audits are failing. Take that list to your developer.

If you want to cross-check with Google's official tool, run Chrome Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools (F12 → Lighthouse tab) and look at the Agentic Browsing category. The score there is the definitive number. Lighthouse Agentic Browsing is still marked experimental — the score may vary slightly between runs, so don't worry about ±3 points.

What "good" looks like after a clean install

If all five checks pass, your site is in the top 10% of websites for AI agent readiness as of mid-2026. That's not a marketing claim — it's the empirical state of the web today. Most sites fail Check 1 outright.

What having a clean install actually buys you: AI agents that visit your site can find your files, read your content with structure, and quote your policies and product descriptions accurately when answering customer questions. Search-driven traffic that goes through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews increasingly relies on these signals.

What it doesn't buy you: traffic instantly. Search engines and AI assistants update their index of your site on their schedule, not yours. Most clean installs see results within 2-4 weeks.

If any of the five checks failed, you now have a precise list of what to ask whoever installed your kit. The questions in plain English above translate directly into developer-task language.

What to do next

  • If you're shopping for a clean install: run the free audit to see where you currently stand. Most SMB sites score under 30 before install and 75+ after.
  • If you installed yourself with a free generator and Check 1-2 are failing: read Lighthouse Agentic Browsing — every audit, every fix for the per-audit fix recipes.
  • If you're using a specific CMS: read the platform install matrix — the install path is different on each platform, and the matrix tells you exactly which path your CMS uses.

Related

Keep reading

All posts →