academy.com

Your search results page (https://www.academy.com/search?q=gift) did not return usable content for every probe. Agents use site search to find a product when the user names it; a search page that is blocked or empty forces them to guess URLs or give up.

• claude-user: challenge (200)

Typical causes and fixes:

• Results are rendered client-side. Third-party search (Algolia, Klevu, Searchspring, Nosto) often replaces the results grid with JavaScript. Keep the platform's server-rendered results as the HTML fallback, or render results on the server before enhancing them.
• A WAF rule treats query strings as scraping. Allow the shopping agents (see the homepage and product-page fixes) on the search path, and raise any rate limit on ?q=.
• The search URL is hard to find. Expose a plain <form action="/search"> with a q input in the header, and declare it in WebSite JSON-LD so agents can jump straight to results:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": { "@type": "EntryPoint", "urlTemplate": "https://www.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}" },
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}

Your robots.txt has no Content-Signal directive. Content Signals (contentsignals.org) is a robots.txt extension that states, separately, whether your content may be used for search, as real-time AI input (which is what shopping agents do), and for training. An explicit signal scores fully; silence scores half.

You can welcome shopping agents while still declining training. Add to the * group (or to each group you care about):

User-agent: *
Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=no
Allow: /

Keep ai-input=yes; set ai-train however you like. If Cloudflare manages your robots.txt, the equivalent setting lives in AI Crawl Control → Content Signals.

Edit the robots.txt served from your web root (or the CDN/edge rule that generates it) and redeploy. Crawlers cache robots.txt for up to 24 hours, so re-scan after a day.

Nothing usable was found at /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory (HTTP 404). Web Bot Auth is the IETF draft that lets agents sign requests with HTTP Message Signatures; parties that sign publish their Ed25519 public keys in this directory, and verifiers fetch it to check the Signature and Signature-Input headers. Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard's Agent Pay, and Cloudflare's signed-agent verification are all built on it.

Two steps matter for a storefront:

• Verify signatures at your edge so signed agents are let through bot management instead of challenged. On Cloudflare this is the Verified Bots / signed agents setting; other WAFs are adding the same.
• Publish your own directory for any requests you sign (your own agent, service-to-service calls, or a verifier that expects one to exist). Serve it with Content-Type: application/http-message-signatures-directory+json:

{
  "keys": [
    {
      "kty": "OKP",
      "crv": "Ed25519",
      "kid": "2026-01",
      "x": "<base64url-encoded public key>",
      "nbf": 1767225600,
      "exp": 1798761600
    }
  ]
}

Serve the file from the same origin as the storefront, with a long cache lifetime, and rotate keys by adding the new one before removing the old.

Your Offer is missing shippingDetails. Agents rank options by delivery time, delivery cost, return risk, and how confident they are in the price; these three fields are where they look.

Add to the offers object:

"priceValidUntil": "2026-12-31",
"shippingDetails": {
  "@type": "OfferShippingDetails",
  "shippingRate": { "@type": "MonetaryAmount", "value": "0", "currency": "USD" },
  "shippingDestination": { "@type": "DefinedRegion", "addressCountry": "US" },
  "deliveryTime": {
    "@type": "ShippingDeliveryTime",
    "handlingTime": { "@type": "QuantitativeValue", "minValue": 0, "maxValue": 1, "unitCode": "DAY" },
    "transitTime": { "@type": "QuantitativeValue", "minValue": 2, "maxValue": 5, "unitCode": "DAY" }
  }
},
"hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
  "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
  "applicableCountry": "US",
  "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
  "merchantReturnDays": 30,
  "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
  "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn"
}

Use your real values; one representative shipping rate and destination is enough. Set priceValidUntil to a date you can honour (the end of the current season or year, regenerated as it passes).

Many stores define the return policy once at the Organization level and reference it from each Offer; either is fine as long as the Offer on the product page carries or links to it.

Your sitemap (https://www.academy.com/sitemap.xml) is reachable and we sampled 679 URLs, but none looked like a product URL and no child sitemap was named after products. Agents use the sitemap to enumerate the catalog without crawling.

Make product entries recognisable: either keep product URLs on a conventional path (/products/…, /product/…, /p/…, /item/…) or split products into a child sitemap whose filename contains "product" (for example sitemap-products-1.xml). Compressed (.xml.gz) sitemaps are skipped; serve plain XML.

Requesting https://www.academy.com/p/ruger-american-predator-20-308-winchester-bolt-action-rifle with Accept: text/markdown returned HTML. Agents that support content negotiation get a page that is a tenth of the size and needs no parsing. This is worth one point and is a nice-to-have.

When the Accept header prefers text/markdown, respond with a Markdown body and Vary: Accept:

GET /products/trail-runner-2 HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/markdown

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8
Vary: Accept

# Trail Runner 2
**$129.00** · In stock · SKU TR2-BLK-10

Lightweight waterproof trail shoe. Sizes 6–13. Free shipping over $75, 30-day returns.

The simplest place to do this is edge middleware (a Cloudflare Worker, Vercel or Netlify middleware, or a Next.js route) that converts the rendered HTML or renders a dedicated template. If you are on Cloudflare, the "Markdown for Agents" option in AI Crawl Control does the conversion for you.

/llms.txt returned an HTML page (probably your 404 or homepage) instead of plain text.

llms.txt (llmstxt.org) is a short Markdown file at the site root that tells language models what the site is and where the important pages are. For a store, point at the catalog, the policies, and any agent endpoints. Serve it as text/plain or text/markdown with a 200 status:

# Example Outdoor

> Example sells trail-running shoes and apparel, shipping to the US and Canada. Free 30-day returns.

## Shop
- [All products](https://www.example.com/collections/all): the full catalog
- [Product sitemap](https://www.example.com/sitemap_products_1.xml)

## Policies
- [Shipping](https://www.example.com/policies/shipping-policy)
- [Returns](https://www.example.com/policies/refund-policy)

## For agents
- [UCP profile](https://www.example.com/.well-known/ucp)
- [Storefront MCP](https://www.example.com/api/mcp)

https://www.academy.com/api/ucp/mcp did not return a tool list (HTTP 401). The endpoint must speak MCP over Streamable HTTP: accept a JSON-RPC POST and answer with JSON or an SSE stream.

Test it the way we do:

curl -sS -X POST https://www.academy.com/api/ucp/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'

• tools/list must work without authentication; require auth on the tool calls that need it, and advertise it through OAuth discovery (see that fix).
• Return 200 with Content-Type: application/json (or text/event-stream), never a 405 for POST or an HTML page.
• Make sure the URL in the UCP profile (services → dev.ucp.shopping → mcp.endpoint) points at this endpoint exactly.

Any MCP server SDK (TypeScript, Python, Go) with the Streamable HTTP transport will do; mount it on the storefront origin so the profile, the endpoint, and the cookies share a domain.

No MCP server answered tools/list at /api/mcp (HTTP 404). This is the conventional storefront endpoint (Shopify's Storefront MCP lives here) where an agent can search the catalog, read policies, and manage a cart without scraping.

Expose an MCP server over Streamable HTTP at that path with tools such as search_shop_catalog, get_product_details, search_shop_policies_and_faqs, get_cart, and update_cart. tools/list must be callable without authentication.

If you already run the UCP MCP endpoint, mounting the same server at /api/mcp is enough.

Nothing was found at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json. The server card is the MCP discovery document that lets an agent find your server, its transport endpoint, and how to authenticate, without reading documentation.

Publish a JSON document describing the server (field names follow the current MCP server-card draft; adjust to the version you target):

{
  "serverInfo": { "name": "example-storefront", "title": "Example Storefront", "version": "1.0.0" },
  "description": "Search the Example catalog, read policies, and manage a cart.",
  "transport": { "type": "streamable-http", "endpoint": "https://www.example.com/api/mcp" },
  "capabilities": { "tools": {} },
  "authentication": { "required": false }
}

Serve it as application/json with CORS enabled, and keep the endpoint in sync with the one your UCP profile names.

No API catalog was found. RFC 9727 defines /.well-known/api-catalog, a linkset that points agents at your APIs and their descriptions (OpenAPI, MCP, UCP) in one place.

Serve this as application/linkset+json:

{
  "linkset": [
    {
      "anchor": "https://www.example.com/",
      "service-desc": [
        { "href": "https://www.example.com/api/openapi.json", "type": "application/vnd.oai.openapi+json" }
      ],
      "service-doc": [
        { "href": "https://www.example.com/developers", "type": "text/html" }
      ],
      "service-meta": [
        { "href": "https://www.example.com/.well-known/ucp", "type": "application/json" },
        { "href": "https://www.example.com/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json", "type": "application/json" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Also advertise it from the homepage with a Link header, which we accept on its own:

Link: </.well-known/api-catalog>; rel="api-catalog"

None of /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, /.well-known/openid-configuration, and /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource returned a JSON document. Agents that need to act on a customer's account (order status, saved addresses, loyalty) look for OAuth 2.0 discovery before they will attempt authenticated calls; it is also what MCP clients use to authorise against your MCP server.

If you run an authorization server on this origin, publish RFC 8414 metadata at /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server:

{
  "issuer": "https://www.example.com",
  "authorization_endpoint": "https://www.example.com/oauth/authorize",
  "token_endpoint": "https://www.example.com/oauth/token",
  "registration_endpoint": "https://www.example.com/oauth/register",
  "scopes_supported": ["cart:write", "orders:read"],
  "response_types_supported": ["code"],
  "grant_types_supported": ["authorization_code", "refresh_token"],
  "code_challenge_methods_supported": ["S256"]
}

If authentication is handled by a separate identity provider, publish RFC 9728 protected-resource metadata at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource pointing at it:

{
  "resource": "https://www.example.com/api/mcp",
  "authorization_servers": ["https://auth.example.com"],
  "scopes_supported": ["cart:write", "orders:read"],
  "bearer_methods_supported": ["header"]
}

Support PKCE and dynamic client registration (RFC 7591) so agents can onboard without a manual app review.

None of /.well-known/agent-card.json, /.well-known/agent.json, and /.well-known/agent-skills/index.json was found. An A2A agent card tells other agents that your store has an agent of its own and what it can do; an Agent Skills index lists reusable skill files. Either satisfies this one-point check.

A minimal A2A agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json:

{
  "name": "Example Shopping Assistant",
  "description": "Find, compare, and buy Example products.",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/a2a",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "protocolVersion": "0.3.0",
  "capabilities": { "streaming": true },
  "defaultInputModes": ["text/plain"],
  "defaultOutputModes": ["text/plain", "application/json"],
  "skills": [
    {
      "id": "find-products",
      "name": "Find products",
      "description": "Search the catalog by query, size, colour, and price.",
      "tags": ["shopping", "search"]
    }
  ]
}

Or, if you publish skills rather than an agent, serve /.well-known/agent-skills/index.json listing each skill's name, description, and the URL of its SKILL.md. Only publish a card for an endpoint that actually answers.

Your homepage has Organization markup but it is missing url, logo, and sameAs. Agents use these to confirm who is selling and to cross-check the brand against its official profiles.

Add to the homepage (an OnlineStore is an Organization, and is the better fit for a shop):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "OnlineStore",
  "name": "Example Outdoor",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/images/logo.png",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/example",
    "https://www.facebook.com/example",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example_Outdoor"
  ],
  "contactPoint": { "@type": "ContactPoint", "contactType": "customer service", "email": "help@example.com" }
}

Agents will not hand payment or personal details to an origin that is not strictly HTTPS. Three things are checked:

• OK: the storefront is served over HTTPS.
• Missing: a plain http:// request redirects (301/308) to https://.
• Missing: the Strict-Transport-Security header is set.

Send this header on every HTTPS response:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains

Start with a shorter max-age if you are unsure every subdomain supports HTTPS, then raise it.

Configure the redirect at the edge or web server (nginx: a server block on port 80 with return 301 https://$host$request_uri;; Apache: a RewriteRule in the port-80 virtual host; Cloudflare: SSL/TLS → Edge Certificates → Always Use HTTPS).

If you are behind Cloudflare, the whole thing is three toggles: SSL/TLS mode Full (strict), Always Use HTTPS, and HSTS under Edge Certificates.