Machine-Readable Endpoint
Also known as: AI endpoint, Structured endpoint
A published file stating what a property is and what it contains, in a format a machine can parse without interpreting prose.
Machine-readable endpoints are structured files served alongside a property's pages: a manifest declaring identity and available endpoints, a catalog declaring what collections exist and how large they are, a health file declaring freshness, a plain-text summary for language models.
Their function is to remove interpretation. A system that would otherwise infer what a site is about from its prose can read a declaration instead.
The common failure is contradiction: a manifest advertising endpoints that robots.txt then blocks, or a catalog listing collections that return 404. Generating both sides from one source of truth is the fix. Checking that the files are currently valid JSON is the minimum, because regeneration failures are silent.