Agent readiness

What AI agents need from your website

It depends on what you sell. A pizza shop has to publish sizes, prices, a delivery fee and a way to order. A hotel has to publish room types, rates and whether a room is free for the dates the guest gave. An assistant can only tell a customer what your site tells it — and when your site tells it nothing, it recommends somewhere that did.

Below is the actual list, for 12 kinds of business: 81 capabilities in total, 36 of them required. It is not a theory we hold. It is the same checklist the free scan reads your live homepage against, and the same one a site has to satisfy to be certified. Where the answer is missing, that is the gap.

The one requirement every business shares

Contact. All 12 checklists require it, and it is the floor of agent-readiness: an assistant that cannot hand a customer over has to end the conversation by telling them to go and search for you themselves. Everything below sits on top of that.

What is required, by kind of business

The required items are the ones that decide certification. The rest are worth having, but a site can certify without them.

Pizza / takeaway

9 checked · 3 required

Menu with sizes and prices — Your full menu with today’s prices, the sizes you sell, and the extras. An assistant cannot discuss an order without these.
Delivery fee, minimum, and time — The three questions that decide whether a delivery order happens. Without them an agent has to guess or refuse.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Today's specials · Open right now · Place an order · Opening hours · Address and directions · Service area check

Online store

8 checked · 3 required

Search the catalogue — Search across your catalogue. This is how an assistant finds the one product out of hundreds.
Product detail — One product in full — price, options, whether it is in stock — so it can be recommended honestly.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Stock and availability · Shipping cost and time · Returns · Add to cart · Checkout

Restaurant / cafe

6 checked · 3 required

Menu with prices — Your full menu with today’s prices, the sizes you sell, and the extras. An assistant cannot discuss an order without these.
Table availability — Whether a room is free for the dates the customer gave you.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Book a table · Opening hours · Address and directions

Trades / home services

8 checked · 3 required

Services offered — What you actually do. Without it an assistant cannot tell whether you are relevant to the question it was asked.
Request an estimate — A way to request a quote, and what you need in order to quote.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Service area check · Earliest appointment · Pricing and call-out fee · Opening hours · Address and directions

Professional services

6 checked · 3 required

Practice areas — What you actually do. Without it an assistant cannot tell whether you are relevant to the question it was asked.
Book a consultation — The conversion event. Reversible, so layer 3 rather than 4.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Fee structure · Coverage area · Address and directions

Software / SaaS

5 checked · 2 required

Pricing plans — Your plans and prices, so an assistant can answer the pricing question nobody likes phoning about.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Documentation search · Start a free trial · Feature availability

Salon / spa / beauty

7 checked · 4 required

Treatments and services — What you actually do. Without it an assistant cannot tell whether you are relevant to the question it was asked.
Price list — A price list. Price is the second question a customer asks, after whether you do the thing at all.
Available slots — What is free, and when. This is the question that decides whether the booking happens now or becomes a phone call tomorrow.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Book an appointment · Opening hours · Address and directions

Gym / fitness studio

7 checked · 3 required

Membership plans and prices — Your membership options and what each costs.
Class timetable — Your timetable. For a studio the schedule is the product.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Facilities and equipment · Book an appointment · Opening hours · Address and directions

Hotel / lodging

6 checked · 3 required

Room types and rates — Your room types and what each one costs.
Availability for dates — Whether a room is free for the dates the customer gave you.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Check-in, cancellation and pets · Amenities · Address and directions

Real estate

8 checked · 3 required

Search properties — A way to search what you have. If an assistant cannot search, it cannot help a buyer at all.
One listing in full — One property in full — price, size, beds, the facts — so two homes can be compared side by side.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Still available, and viewing times · Book an appointment · Who to speak to · Area information · Address and directions

Clinic / healthcare

7 checked · 4 required

Services and conditions treated — What you actually do. Without it an assistant cannot tell whether you are relevant to the question it was asked.
Who the clinicians are — Who the clinicians are, and where. Patients choose a person as much as a practice.
Appointment availability — Whether a room is free for the dates the customer gave you.
Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.

Also checked, not required: Book an appointment · Insurance accepted · Locations and opening hours

General business

4 checked · 2 required

Contact — A way for an assistant to hand the customer over to you. Every business needs this. It is the floor of agent-readiness.
What this business offers — What you actually do. Without it an assistant cannot tell whether you are relevant to the question it was asked.

Also checked, not required: Opening hours · Address and directions

Why this is invisible to you, and visible to an agent

Almost every site we scan publishes some of this already. The problem is the form. An assistant reading your homepage does not see your page the way you do — it gets text and markup, with no ability to look at a photograph of a menu, open a PDF, fill in a contact form, or interpret a price that appears only inside an image.

So the same fact can be present for a person and absent for a machine. A restaurant with a beautiful photographed menu has told an assistant nothing about what it serves or what it charges. A hotel with a booking widget has told it nothing about rates unless those rates also exist as data. This is the whole reason the checklist exists: not to ask you to say more, but to ask you to say what you already say in a form that survives being read.

What a fix actually looks like

It is usually smaller than owners expect. The two files that do most of the work are plain text, and neither requires touching your design:

Structured data on the pages you already have — a block that states your hours, your prices, your services, and your location in a fixed format. It is invisible to visitors and unambiguous to a machine. More on structured data
Plain files at your domain root — a summary of what you offer, written for a machine rather than a search engine. What those files are

When the scan finds a gap it names the specific fix for that capability, including the snippet to paste and who on your side can do it. Where no standard exists — live availability, booking hand-offs — it says so rather than inventing a snippet that would not work.

Frequently asked

What do AI agents need from a website?

It depends on the business. A pizza shop needs sizes, prices, delivery fee and a way to order. A hotel needs room types, rates and availability for dates. A clinic needs the services it treats, who the clinicians are, and appointment availability. Across the 12 kinds of business MCPHubz checks, there are 81 capabilities and 36 of them are required — and contact details are required for every single one.

How is this different from a general website audit?

A general audit measures the quality of a site for people: speed, accessibility, broken links, search ranking. This measures something else — which facts are available to a machine that cannot see your pages. A site can score perfect on every human metric and still leave an assistant unable to answer the simplest question about it, because the answer is in an image, a PDF, or behind a form.

Do I need to rebuild my website?

Almost never. The required capabilities are about publishing facts you already have, in a form a machine can read — structured data on the pages that already exist, plus plain files. Most fixes are a snippet on an existing page, and every gap the scan finds comes with the specific change to make.

What happens if my business type is not on the list?

We check 12 kinds of business and add more as we meet them; if the scanner cannot tell what you are, it says so rather than guessing, because the detected industry selects the entire checklist. A wrong guess is worse than an honest "we are not sure".

How do I find out what mine is missing?

Run the free scan at mcphubz.com/scan. It reads your live homepage, works out what kind of business you are, and lists the specific things an agent needs from a business like yours — what each one is, why an agent wants it, and a copy-and-paste fix for each gap. No account, about a minute.

Find out which of these your site is missing

Free, about a minute, no account. It reads your live homepage, works out what kind of business you are, and lists the gaps with a fix for each. If your site refuses the reader, you will be told that instead of being shown a number.

Scan your site free