# Why Your Site Needs A Sitemap For Actions, Not Just Pages Traditional sitemap.xml tells crawlers what to READ. Agents need to know what to CALL. A parallel machine-readable list of your site's invocable actions — book, quote, verify, order — is the next discoverability layer. Author: J.A. Watte Published: April 23, 2026 Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-agent-invocation-sitemap-generator/ --- Sitemaps as we know them were built for 2004's problem: crawlers discovering pages. Agents in 2026 have a different problem: discovering callable actions. "Does this site let me book an appointment? Can I get a quote without filling out a form? Is there a way to verify a service area programmatically?" An agent asking those questions can't find answers in sitemap.xml — that file only lists pages to render. The sitemap an agent actually needs lists actions: name, endpoint, auth, method, expected input. That file doesn't have a settled standard name yet. Three conventions are emerging in parallel: 1. **schema.org PotentialAction** — embedded in the homepage JSON-LD. Stable, widely supported. 2. **`/.well-known/mcp.json`** — Anthropic-defined Model Context Protocol tools manifest. Broadly adopted by agent frameworks. 3. **`/.well-known/agent-actions.json`** — a nascent parallel convention that extends the sitemap paradigm directly. Publishing all three hedges across agent frameworks while each finds its standardization path. ## What the [Agent Invocation Sitemap Generator](/tools/agent-invocation-sitemap-generator/) does You describe your business + declared callable actions (book, quote, verify, order, contact, search, subscribe). Per action you specify: - Name (snake-case identifier) - schema.org action type (ReserveAction, QuoteAction, ContactAction, etc.) - Endpoint URL + HTTP method - Authentication requirement (none / API-key / OAuth / basic) - Rate limit per minute per agent - Short description for agents The tool emits three parallel outputs: 1. A JSON-LD block to paste into your homepage `` with `potentialAction` entries 2. An MCP tools manifest to host at `/.well-known/mcp.json` 3. An agent-actions.json sitemap to host at `/.well-known/agent-actions.json` ## The first-mover window Only a tiny fraction of SMBs have any of these published. In 2026-2027, major agent-framework clients (Claude Desktop, ChatGPT agents, Gemini copilots, LangChain/LlamaIndex agents) are increasingly trying these well-known paths to determine whether a site supports programmatic invocation. Sites that publish get: - Preferred treatment in agent-initiated workflows (e.g., ChatGPT user asks "book a roofer" and the agent sees your bookable endpoint) - Higher trust in AI-generated recommendations (agents with no visible action surface are treated as "unclear whether bookable") - Potential revenue routing through the agent layer directly, bypassing competitor-heavy search results Sites that don't publish get: - Treated as read-only sources by agents - Skipped for action-intent queries - Eventually lose action-intent traffic to competitors who did publish ## What actions to declare Start with public, read-only actions. Lowest risk, fastest to deploy: - **VerifyAction** — "Do you service ZIP X?" endpoint returns yes/no. Safe because it doesn't expose customer data or pricing. - **SearchAction** — "Find a [product/service] matching [criteria]" endpoint. Catalog exposure. - **ContactAction** — "Send an inquiry" endpoint. Functionally equivalent to a contact form but machine-callable. Next tier — actions that require auth but are low-risk: - **QuoteAction** — "Request a written quote" endpoint. Usually fine with an API key for rate-limiting. - **ReserveAction** — "Book an appointment / consultation" endpoint. Needs at minimum API-key + rate limit. Highest tier — actions that affect money or data: - **OrderAction** / **PurchaseAction** — full transaction handling. Should require OAuth + payment-layer integration + rigorous rate limiting. Don't declare the highest tier until the lower tiers are running smoothly for a month. Agents that hit broken endpoints deprioritize your site in future invocations; credibility takes weeks to rebuild. ## The authentication decision Three legitimate options: - **None.** Public endpoint. Use for read-only verify/search/contact. Rate-limit aggressively at the origin. - **API-key.** Simple shared secret. Agent embeds the key in requests. Good balance for SMB scale. - **OAuth2.** Full user-authorization. Required for user-data or payment-involved actions. Don't use **basic auth** for agent invocation — it's brittle and many agent-framework clients don't support it cleanly. ## The rate-limit discipline Every declared action should carry a `rate_limit` field. Honest agents respect it. It's also your first line of defense against abuse — if rate limits are well-publicized, malicious actors have to work around them rather than casually hammering your endpoints. Start with conservative limits: 30 requests/min per agent for write actions, 60-120/min for read actions. Raise after you have a month of actual usage data. ## Related reading - [MCP Advertising Audit](/blog/blog-tool-mcp-advertising-audit/) — verify your manifests are discoverable - [Agentic Commerce Readiness](/tools/agentic-commerce-readiness/) — broader readiness check - [Well-Known Audit](/tools/well-known-audit/) — general /.well-known/* audit - [MCP Server Audit](/tools/mcp-server-audit/) — when you've stood up an actual MCP server ## Fact-check notes and sources - schema.org PotentialAction: [schema.org/potentialAction](https://schema.org/potentialAction) - Model Context Protocol: [modelcontextprotocol.io](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) - Well-known URI registry: [iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris](https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris.xhtml) *This post is informational, not engineering consulting advice. Mentions of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, schema.org, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Model Context Protocol are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied.* --- Canonical HTML: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-agent-invocation-sitemap-generator/ RSS: https://jwatte.com/feed.xml JSON Feed: https://jwatte.com/feed.json Hero image: https://jwatte.com/images/blog-tool-agent-invocation-sitemap-generator.webp