Quick start
Three steps. No code changes to your website required.
Add a CNAME record
In your DNS settings, create a CNAME record that points your agents subdomain to somready.com:
agents.yourdomain.com CNAME api.somready.com
Add directives to robots.txt
Open your robots.txt and add these lines, after your existing User-agent rules:
# Semantic Object Model — somready.com SOM-Endpoint: https://agents.yourdomain.com/v1/som SOM-Format: SOM/1.0 SOM-Scope: main-content SOM-Freshness: 3600 SOM-Token-Budget: 15000
How it works
When an AI agent visits a page on your site, it first fetches your robots.txt. If SOM Directives are present, a Level 1 compliant agent will request the SOM representation instead of raw HTML — fetching from your SOM endpoint with the target page URL as a parameter.
# Agent fetches:
GET https://agents.yourdomain.com/v1/som?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyourdomain.com%2Farticle%2F123
# somready proxies through Plasmate and returns:
{
"som_version": "0.1",
"url": "https://yourdomain.com/article/123",
"title": "Your article title",
"regions": [...],
"meta": { "html_bytes": 184351, "som_bytes": 5376, "compression_ratio": 34.3 }
}The SOM response uses 10–100× fewer tokens than raw HTML. The agent gets richer, more structured information faster and at lower cost. You get visibility into which agents are reading what.
The underlying technology is Plasmate, an Apache 2.0 open-source SOM compiler. somready.com manages the infrastructure so you don't have to.
Directive reference
All directives are added to your existing robots.txt file. They follow the same syntax as standard directives and are ignored by agents that don't understand them. Full specification at somspec.org/directives.
SOM-Endpoint(URL)requiredThe base URL of your SOM service. Agents append ?url= with the encoded target page URL. For somready.com users: https://agents.yourdomain.com/v1/som
SOM-Format(string)requiredThe format of the representation. Use "SOM/1.0" for the current specification. Future versions will support markdown and accessibility-tree.
SOM-Scope(string)Which content to include. Options: full-page (everything), main-content (recommended — strips nav and footer), article-body (article text only).
SOM-Freshness(seconds)How long agents should cache a SOM response before re-fetching. Recommended values: 900 (breaking news), 3600 (regular news), 86400 (evergreen/docs).
SOM-Token-Budget(integer)A hint to agents about the expected maximum token count. Lets agents estimate context window usage before committing to a fetch.
SOM-Rate-Limit(N/period)Advisory rate limit for your SOM endpoint. Example: 60/minute. Agents that honor this avoid overloading your endpoint.
CNAME setup
The CNAME record points your agents subdomain to somready's infrastructure. This is what makes your robots.txt endpoint actually respond with SOM.
# DNS record to add: Type: CNAME Host: agents Value: api.somready.com # Results in: agents.yourdomain.com → somready infrastructure
Where to find DNS settings:
- Cloudflare — DNS → Add record
- Namecheap — Domain List → Manage → Advanced DNS
- GoDaddy — DNS → Add New Record
- Vercel — Domains → your domain → DNS Records
DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate, but usually resolve within minutes. Use dig agents.yourdomain.com CNAME to verify.
Verification
Once your CNAME and robots.txt are set up, verify with the checker:
SOM Readiness Checker
Fetches your robots.txt and reports on each directive.
You can also test the SOM endpoint directly:
# Test your SOM endpoint manually
curl "https://agents.yourdomain.com/v1/som?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyourdomain.com"
# Should return JSON starting with:
# { "som_version": "0.1", "url": "...", "regions": [...] }Add your badge
Once your site is SOM-ready, add a badge to show visitors and other agents that your content is optimized for AI.
Badge URL pattern
https://somready.com/badge/{your-domain}.svg
# Example:
https://somready.com/badge/example.com.svgThe badge automatically updates to reflect your current compliance status.
HTML embed
<a href="https://somready.com/check?d={your-domain}">
<img src="https://somready.com/badge/{your-domain}.svg" alt="SOM Ready" />
</a>Markdown embed
[](https://somready.com/check?d={your-domain})Replace {your-domain} with your actual domain (e.g., example.com). The badge links to your full compliance report at /check?d=your-domain.
Generate your badge
Enter your domain to get ready-to-copy embed codes.
FAQ
Does somready.com need access to my website?
No. somready.com fetches your pages on-demand when an agent requests them, the same way any browser or crawler would. No credentials, no integration, no code changes.
What if my site has JavaScript-rendered content?
The current version of somready uses Plasmate, which is optimized for server-rendered and statically generated content. JavaScript-heavy SPAs will still work but may have incomplete element coverage. JavaScript rendering support is on the roadmap.
Which AI agents honor SOM Directives?
As of April 2026, Plasmate (the reference implementation) honors directives at Level 2. Most other agent frameworks are at Level 0 — they are aware of robots.txt but do not yet parse SOM-* directives. The compliance matrix at somspec.org/compliance tracks this.
What happens to agents that don't understand SOM Directives?
They ignore the directives and continue fetching raw HTML, exactly as before. SOM Directives are additive — they never break anything for existing agents.
Is my content sent anywhere?
Pages are fetched and processed when an agent requests them. The SOM output is cached briefly (per SOM-Freshness) to avoid re-fetching the same page repeatedly. No content is stored permanently.
What is the SOM open standard?
The Semantic Object Model is an Apache 2.0 open specification for representing web pages as structured JSON for AI agents. The specification, validator, and compliance data are at somspec.org.