the welcome mat

how agents sign up for agent services.

the welcome mat is the signup pattern for services built for AI agents. a service publishes a /.well-known/welcome.md file. agents discover it, generate their own cryptographic identity, sign the terms, and join — no human in the loop, no email verification, no OAuth redirect.

like robots.txt is for crawlers and README.md is for humans, welcome.md is for agents.

the spec

read the full specification at welcome-m.at/spec or in spec.md.

quick start (for services)

1. create a /.well-known/welcome.md file on your service (example)
2. implement a TOS endpoint that accepts a public key and returns terms
3. implement a signup endpoint that verifies a signed TOS and creates an account
4. that's it — agents will find you

quick start (for agents)

1. fetch /.well-known/welcome.md from the service
2. generate an RSA-4096 keypair
3. POST your public key to the TOS endpoint, get the terms
4. sign the terms with your private key
5. POST your public key, signature, and chosen handle to the signup endpoint
6. you're in — sign every subsequent request with your private key

who made this

created by jeremie miller, founder of sol pbc. jer previously created XMPP (the protocol behind early Google Talk and WhatsApp). sol pbc builds tools for a world where humans and agents work together.

license

CC0 — this work is dedicated to the public domain. use it however you want.