# The words of agent access

What each term means, what our drives record for it and the products behind it.

Source: https://agentdrives.com/glossary · as data: https://agentdrives.com/glossary.json · licence CC BY 4.0

## What we measure

- [Agent access](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agent-access.md): Whether an AI agent can use a product on its own: find it, sign up, get a key, do the work, pay and leave, with no person stepping in.
- [Agent Access Levels](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agent-access-levels.md): Our scale from L0 to L5 for how far an AI agent gets in a product on its own. L0 means there is nothing for an agent to use. L5 means it gets in, does the work, pays and leaves without a person.
- [Drive](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/drive.md): One run of our AI agent through a real product: it reads the docs, signs up, gets a key, does the core work, pays where it can and deletes the account.
- [Gets in on its own](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/gets-in-on-its-own.md): An agent has working access with no person helping: its own sign-up, a key over the API, pay per call or no key at all.
- [Needs a human](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/needs-a-human.md): A step a person had to do for the agent: solve a CAPTCHA, type a phone code, enter a card or click a link in a browser.

## At the door

- [Wall](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/wall.md): Anything that stops an AI agent at a product's door: a bot check, a phone number at sign-up, a card before first use, a sign-up that only works in a browser.
- [Bot check](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/bot-check.md): A check in front of a page or a form that decides whether the visitor is a person: a puzzle, a checkbox or a silent score. Each site chooses where it shows and which bots it lets through.
- [Signed agents](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/signed-agents.md): AI agents that sign each request with a key the site can check, so the site knows who sent it. A site can let signed agents through a bot check that stops everyone else.
- [Web Bot Auth](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/web-bot-auth.md): The draft standard that signed agents use: each request carries a signature, and the agent publishes its keys in a directory at a fixed address so a site can check them.
- [robots.txt for AI agents](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/robots-txt.md): The file at a site's root that tells crawlers which pages to stay off. Some sites add rules that name AI agents.
- [API key](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/api-key.md): The secret an agent sends with each call to a product's API. Without one, most APIs answer nothing useful.

## Standards and tools

- [MCP](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/mcp.md): Model Context Protocol: an open standard for connecting AI agents to a product's tools and data. A product runs an MCP server, and an agent calls its tools.
- [llms.txt](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/llms-txt.md): A Markdown file on a site that points AI models and agents to the pages that matter, often with plain-text versions of the docs.
- [OpenAPI](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/openapi.md): A standard file that describes every route of an API: its paths, inputs and answers. An agent can read it to learn the API without reading the docs.
- [CLI](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/cli.md): A product's command-line tool. An agent working in a terminal often signs in and works through it instead of the web app.
- [x402](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/x402.md): An open payment standard built on HTTP's 402 Payment Required: the server answers a request with what it costs, and the agent pays and sends the request again.
- [MPP](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/mpp.md): The Machine Payments Protocol: a way for a server to ask for payment over HTTP, so an agent can pay for a call or a plan without a checkout page.

## Words of the field

- [Agentic commerce](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agentic-commerce.md): AI agents buying for people and companies: finding the price, paying and getting what was paid for, with no person at the checkout.
- [Agents as customers](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agents-as-customers.md): AI agents that choose, sign up for and pay for software on behalf of the people and companies they work for. A product that keeps them out loses those sales.
- [Agent-ready](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agent-ready.md): Said of a product an AI agent can start using on its own: it finds the docs, signs up, gets a key and does the work without a person.
- [Agent readiness](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agent-readiness.md): How ready a product looks for AI agents, usually as a score from reading its site: its llms.txt, its docs, its MCP server and its robots.txt.
- [Agent-friendly](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agent-friendly.md): Easy for an AI agent to use: clear docs it can read, a way to sign up and get a key without a browser, and errors it can act on.
- [AX](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/ax.md): Agent experience: what using a product is like for an AI agent, from the docs and the sign-up to the errors and the bill. It is to agents what UX is to people.
- [Agentic web](https://agentdrives.com/glossary/agentic-web.md): The web as AI agents use it: sites and APIs that agents read, sign in to and pay on, next to the people who use them.