Open convention for AI-operable websites

The website editor is disappearing.

WEBSITE.md tells your AI agent how to build, edit, preview, validate, and publish your website.

Create a site Read the spec View the convention GitHub

Your website is a repo. Your AI is the editor.

Website builders wrapped sites in hosted editors. AI agents change the tradeoff. For many simple sites, the better interface is a local agent that can read instructions, edit files, preview changes, run checks, and prepare a deploy.

This site is operated by its own WEBSITE.md.

WEBSITE.md   = required — operate the website
AGENTS.md    = optional — work in the repo
DESIGN.md    = optional — visual system
COPY.md      = optional — voice and messaging
SEO.md       = optional — discovery rules

AGENTS.md tells agents how to work in your repo. WEBSITE.md tells agents how to operate your website.

Blocks are Markdown. Page regions are JSON. Simple sites can skip regions.

How it works

1. Add instructions

Add WEBSITE.md at the project root. Split design, copy, and SEO into companion files only when the site grows.

2. Ask your agent

Tell Codex, Cursor, Claude Code, or another coding agent what to change.

3. Check and publish

The agent previews locally, fixes visible issues, runs checks, and reports deploy steps.

The 60-second demo

Create a starter, ask an agent to build a site, watch it edit files, preview locally, fix one visible issue, run checks, and leave you with a deploy-ready folder.

See examples Read CLI docs
  1. Create starter.
  2. Open in an AI coding agent.
  3. Prompt the agent with the instruction files.
  4. Preview, fix, check, deploy.

Open standard first.

Website.md belongs on websitemd.org because it should feel like a convention, not another SaaS. The standard stays free. Products, services, templates, audits, and migration help can grow around it later.

Not a hosted builder

Website.md does not replace every CMS or complex web app. It gives AI agents a practical runbook for operating simple websites with source files, previews, checks, and deploys.