AIMP — AI Manifest Protocol

What is AIMP?

AIMP (AI Manifest Protocol) is the open standard for AEO (AI Engine Optimization) — optimizing your content to be discovered and cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

As AI increasingly answers user queries directly, traditional SEO is losing effectiveness. AIMP helps you adapt to this new reality by:

AI Identification: Require AI systems to identify themselves (operators must be transparent)
Access Control: Allow/block specific AI operators, set usage policies
Structured Content: Serve optimized manifests (20-30x faster than HTML scraping)
Citation Guidance: Tell AIs how to properly cite your content
AEO Analytics: Track which AIs visit your site, measure your AIRS score

Core Files

/ai.txt — Entry point (like robots.txt)
/ai-manifest.json — Unified manifest (identity + policy + content)
/ai-manifest.toon — Optimized format (40% fewer tokens)
/ai-report.json — Analytics & AIRS score

Read the full specification in README.md.

AI Identification (Required)

AIMP requires AI systems to identify themselves via the AIMP-Identity header:

GET /ai-manifest.json
AIMP-Identity: {"operator":"OpenAI","model":"GPT-4"}

Without identification, requests are blocked (403 Forbidden). This ensures:

✅ Publishers know which AIs access their content
✅ Publishers can allow/block specific operators
✅ Transparent AI usage (aligned with EU AI Act)
✅ AEO analytics for optimizing citations

AEO Benefits (Think SEO for AI)

Be Cited by AIs: Structured content = higher chance of citation
Track AI Traffic: See which AIs visit, which pages they access
Measure AIRS Score: 0-100 score for AI readability (like Domain Authority)
Control Access: Block bad actors, allow trusted operators
40% Token Savings: TOON format = lower costs for AI systems

AIMP Certified Badge

Show your visitors and AI systems that your site is optimized for AEO:

<a href="https://aimp-project.org/verify/yoursite.com">
  <img src="https://aimp-project.org/badge/certified.svg" 
       alt="AIMP Certified - AIRS Score 85">
</a>

The badge displays your AIRS score and confirms your AIMP implementation is valid.

Get your badge: Use the AIMP SaaS platform to analyze your site, generate manifests, and obtain certification.

AIMP Ecosystem

AIMP is free and open-source forever. The protocol, schemas, and tools are MIT-licensed.

For easy implementation and optimization, the official AIMP SaaS provides:

Free (1 site): AIRS analysis, manual manifest generation, basic analytics
Starter ($9/mo, 3 sites): Auto-sync, AI recommendations
Pro ($29/mo, 10 sites): API access, white-label reports, real-time monitoring
Enterprise ($299/mo, unlimited): Custom integrations, SLA, account manager

Try AIMP SaaS

Getting Started

To implement AIMP, serve these files from your domain root:

/ai.txt — Points to your manifest files
/ai-manifest.json or /ai-manifest.toon — Your site's manifest
/ai-report.json (optional) — Analytics for AEO tracking

# /ai.txt
# AI Manifest Protocol (AIMP) — entry file
Manifest: /ai-manifest.json
ManifestOptimized: /ai-manifest.toon
Report: /ai-report.json
Version: 1.1

The ai-manifest file contains your site's identity, policy, and content layer (pages with titles, summaries, topics).

Format Comparison: JSON vs TOON

JSON Format (`ai-manifest.json`)

Use when: Universal compatibility is required

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "site": "https://example.com",
  "identity": { "name": "Example Inc." },
  "policy": { "allow": ["read", "summarize"] },
  "content": {
    "pages": [
      { "url": "/", "title": "Home", "summary": "..." }
    ]
  }
}

✅ Universal support · ✅ Easy to debug · ❌ Verbose (~12,000 tokens for 100 pages)

TOON Format (`ai-manifest.toon`)

Use when: Optimizing for AI consumption (recommended)

version: 1.0
site: https://example.com
identity: (name: Example Inc.)
policy: (allow: [read, summarize])
content: (
  pages[3]{url,title,summary}:
    /,Home,Welcome to our site
    /about,About,Learn about us
    /contact,Contact,Get in touch
)

✅ 40% fewer tokens · ✅ Better AI parsing (73.9% vs 69.7%) · ✅ Structural validation

Best practice: Serve both formats, let AI choose based on support.

AIRS — AI Readability Score

AIRS (AI Readability Score) measures how well your content is optimized for AI systems (0-100).

Think of it as Domain Authority for the AI era. A higher AIRS score means:

✅ More likely to be cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity
✅ Better structured content for AI parsing
✅ Higher quality responses when users ask about your topics
✅ Competitive advantage in AEO

AIRS Components

Structure (30%): Valid manifest, schema compliance, metadata completeness
Coverage (30%): Number of pages, topics covered, linkability
Clarity (20%): Summary quality, conciseness, keyword density
Freshness (20%): Content recency, update frequency

Calculate your AIRS score: Use the AIMP SaaS for instant analysis and optimization recommendations.

Community & Contributing

AIMP is an open standard. We welcome contributions, implementations in other languages, and feedback.

View on GitHub Contribute