Agent Disco report

news.ycombinator.com

Grade F · Score 30 / 100

Scanned 20 Aug 2026, 07:36 UTC · Re-scan

Why this grade

This is a failing grade. The foundational signals agents look for OpenAPI specification discovery and Public MCP registry listing aren't in place yet — start there before anything else.

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Quick wins

Low-cost fixes that would nudge this grade up.

  1. /ai.txt AI-crawler directives Add a short `/ai.txt` at the site root declaring your AI-crawler usage terms (see spawning.ai/ai-txt).
  2. /llms-full.txt long-form index Add a `/llms-full.txt` — the full-text companion to llms.txt with your key docs inlined for LLMs (see llmstxt.org).
  3. /llms.txt index for LLMs Add a short `/llms.txt` Markdown index of your key URLs (see https://llmstxt.org).
  4. /.well-known/agent.json (A2A AgentCard) Publish an A2A AgentCard at `/.well-known/agent.json` with name, description, skills, and endpoints.
  5. /.well-known/ai-plugin.json manifest Publish a `/.well-known/ai-plugin.json` manifest with name_for_model, description_for_model, and an api block.

Blocking issues

High-weight checks that aren't passing.

  • OpenAPI specification discovery No OpenAPI spec found at any of 9 conventional paths.
  • Public MCP registry listing Host news.ycombinator.com not listed in any of 2 registry/registries consulted.

Per-category breakdown

Score by check category
Category Score Percent
Anti Bot 15 / 15
100%
Api 0 / 10
0%
Crawl 13 / 13
100%
Docs 0 / 14
0%
Html Meta 0 / 8
0%
Identity 10 / 10
100%
Onboarding 0 / 6
0%
Protocols 0 / 10
0%
Registries 5 / 5
100%

Findings (33)

Anti Bot · 2
Check Status Points Notes
Anti-bot interstitial pass 10 / 10 No anti-bot interstitial markers on a single polite homepage request — behavioural anti-bot can still challenge real crawler traffic.
User-agent sniffing pass 5 / 5 Homepage responses for default and curl UAs are effectively identical.
Api · 3
Check Status Points Notes
GraphQL introspection skip No GraphQL endpoint found at any of 3 conventional paths.
JSON error bodies for API callers skip HTTP 404 returned Content-Type "text/plain; charset=utf-8" — neither JSON nor HTML, so neither pass nor fail.
OpenAPI specification discovery fail 0 / 10 No OpenAPI spec found at any of 9 conventional paths.
Crawl · 3
Check Status Points Notes
RSS/Atom feed info rss feed at https://news.ycombinator.com/rss (30 entries, linked from homepage) (informational — not graded).
robots.txt AI-agent rules pass 13 / 13 All 13 documented AI user-agents can crawl /.
XML sitemap discovery skip No sitemap at the conventional paths or linked from robots.txt.
Docs · 2
Check Status Points Notes
Docs platform discoverability fail 0 / 6 No docs found at any of the conventional paths.
SDK availability across languages fail 0 / 8 No SDKs discoverable via npm, PyPI, or the docs page.
Html Meta · 3
Check Status Points Notes
JSON-LD structured data fail 0 / 8 No JSON-LD blocks on the homepage.
meta description info No `<meta name="description">` on the homepage (informational — a human search-snippet signal, not agent discoverability).
Open Graph tags info No Open Graph tags on the homepage (informational — OG drives human social-share previews, not agent discoverability).
Identity · 3
Check Status Points Notes
Email auth (SPF, DMARC, DKIM) info No SPF / DMARC / DKIM found — domain has no email auth (informational — email trust, not agent discoverability).
security.txt responsible-disclosure declaration skip No security.txt found at either probed path — secondary signal, not a negative one.
TLS + HSTS + HTTPS redirect pass 10 / 10 Valid TLS cert (issuer: C=US, O=Let's Encrypt, CN=YE1, expires 2026-10-17), http → https redirect confirmed. (HSTS max-age=31556900 — informational.)
Llm Training · 3
Check Status Points Notes
Common Crawl index presence info 50 pages from news.ycombinator.com in CC-MAIN-2026-30 (informational — corpus presence, not graded).
Hacker News mentions info 50 verified HN mention(s) of news.ycombinator.com (informational — popularity signal, not graded).
Wikipedia article info Wikipedia article "Hacker News" links to news.ycombinator.com (https://news.ycombinator.com/) (informational — corpus knowledge, not graded).
Onboarding · 1
Check Status Points Notes
API-key / signup path discoverability fail 0 / 6 No signup, API-key, or developer page discoverable by anchor text or conventional path.
Protocols · 2
Check Status Points Notes
Public MCP registry listing fail 0 / 10 Host news.ycombinator.com not listed in any of 2 registry/registries consulted.
A2A AgentCard conformance skip No AgentCard at /.well-known/agent.json — nothing to grade.
Registries · 3
Check Status Points Notes
GitHub public repository pass 5 / 5 3 attributable repo(s): anthropics/claude-code (first party link); cesarblum/sectorforth (first party link); onecli/onecli (first party link). Agent topics: ai-agents.
npm SDK package skip No npm packages attributable to news.ycombinator.com — name matches without a verifiable attribution signal are not counted.
PyPI SDK package skip No PyPI package at the 2 name(s) probed for news.ycombinator.com.
Root Level · 3
Check Status Points Notes
/ai.txt AI-crawler directives skip No /ai.txt present (404) — this is a secondary signal, not a negative one.
/llms-full.txt long-form index skip No /llms-full.txt present (404).
/llms.txt index for LLMs skip No /llms.txt present (404).
Well Known · 5
Check Status Points Notes
/.well-known/agent.json (A2A AgentCard) skip No /.well-known/agent.json present (404).
/.well-known/ai-plugin.json manifest skip No /.well-known/ai-plugin.json present (404).
/.well-known/mcp.json (Model Context Protocol) skip No /.well-known/mcp.json present (404).
OpenID Connect configuration + dynamic registration skip No /.well-known/openid-configuration — site does not advertise an OIDC provider.
/.well-known/openapi.{json,yaml} skip No OpenAPI spec at either well-known path.

Score over time

20 Jul 2026 — F · 30/100 20 Aug 2026 — F · 30/100
Latest
30 — flat
Best
30
Worst
30
Scans
2

Scan history

Recent completed scans for news.ycombinator.com
When Grade Score Checks Change Open scan
20 Aug 2026, 07:36 F 30 33
Since 20 Jul:

no flips

20 Jul 2026, 13:11 F 30 33

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