# Surfing Dog

> Surfing Dog lists and tracks agent-ready businesses: the ones AI agents can message, book and buy from. Three products: Search (find and check agent-ready businesses, whatever software they use), Inbox (open-source software at a business's own address, hosted by us or run by the business itself, so people and agents write to the business directly) and the Trust network (optional and separate: it lists a business and records the receipts its inbox signs, never its messages; the directory's order is made of kept promises, never bought).

Search: find businesses an AI agent can reach, with the doors each one opens, whatever software opens them: MCP, A2A, UCP, ACP, an API, or Surfing Dog Inbox. Over MCP at https://surfingdog.ai/mcp, over REST at https://surfingdog.ai/v1/businesses?q=<words>, or in a browser at https://surfingdog.ai/search?q=<words>. The same MCP server carries a person's question, quote request or booking request to a business's own inbox when the business allows it (ask_business, request_quote, request_booking): Surfing Dog never touches the money and never keeps what anyone writes, and keeps only a record that a request was delivered. Live counts (agent-ready businesses, and how many take messages, bookings, orders and payment or have a catalogue) are in the directory block of https://surfingdog.ai/v1/stats. Connecting to it (transport, tools, limits, examples): https://surfingdog.ai/docs/mcp/; each assistant's steps: https://surfingdog.ai/assistants/.

Inbox: the business's own inbox, open source (MIT), for bookings, orders, quote requests and messages over REST, MCP and email. It runs on the business's own subdomain (for example inbox.yourbusiness.com), hosted by us for free, or on its own Cloudflare account or server. Its manifest and doors live on the business's domain and name the business, and customers and their agents write to the business there, directly. When the business runs it itself, Surfing Dog never touches the money and never keeps what anyone writes; when we host it, it runs on our servers. When a business allows it, we carry an assistant's request to the business's own inbox and keep only a record that it was delivered. Either way the business can download all its data and leave any time. To have it hosted, a business starts at https://app.surfingdog.ai/start; to install it, an AI follows https://surfingdog.ai/install.md. About it: https://surfingdog.ai/inbox.

Trust network: optional and separate from the inbox; joining is the business's choice. It lists the business in the directory and records the receipts its inbox signs (bookings confirmed, orders accepted, and how they ended), with no names, no messages and nothing of what was ordered; everything a network receives is listed at https://surfingdog.ai/network#shared. Inboxes check in with signed hourly pings, businesses and agents sign receipts for what was promised, and the directory's order reads kept promises. Nobody can pay for a place. The rules are versioned at https://surfingdog.ai/v1/ranking, the version in force and the next one announced. About it: https://surfingdog.ai/trust.

Setting a business up for agents: guidance from a real installation, recommendations and not rules (a business may use other tools and other ways). The inbox as a business's front door, or as a thin agent door in front of the helpdesk (Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk), booking system, checkout or own AI it already has; deciding what handles each door; making doors findable; the full journey after an order or a booking; how agents pay; bridges to helpdesks and chat apps. Plain Markdown for an AI: https://surfingdog.ai/setting-up-for-agents.md; the same page for people: https://surfingdog.ai/docs/setting-up-for-agents/.

Check a business: https://surfingdog.ai/check, or the MCP tool check_business. Results: https://surfingdog.ai/b/<domain>. Agentic score rules, versioned: https://surfingdog.ai/v1/score-rules.

Guides, for any business anywhere and no vendor in particular: what makes a business ready for AI agents, and how to let a customer's AI assistant book, order, message or ask for a quote, and pay; publishing hours, prices and terms as data; making agent doors findable; what llms.txt does and doesn't; robots.txt and content signals. Each says what the check counts and ends with a way to check the change worked: https://surfingdog.ai/guides/.

Leaderboards by category and place, the businesses where an agent can book, order or sign up above the rest, then by agentic score, separate from the directory's search order: https://surfingdog.ai/leaderboard.

Discovery for agents: https://surfingdog.ai/.well-known/ai-catalog.json (ARD), the MCP server card at https://surfingdog.ai/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json and the A2A agent card at https://surfingdog.ai/.well-known/agent-card.json.

Specs, versioned, with JSON Schemas and test vectors (MIT): what an AI agent can do at a business, capability by capability, with the evidence for each and how MCP, A2A, OpenAPI, REST, UCP and ACP doors carry it (https://surfingdog.ai/spec/capabilities.json); the agent inbox manifest; receipts; and the census's method. Index for machines: https://surfingdog.ai/spec/index.json. Check a manifest or a receipt: https://surfingdog.ai/spec/check/.

The protocol is open: anyone can run a network. Everything is MIT: the inbox server, the example network, network-check, and @surfingdog/sdk on npm. We host the inbox for free, or self-host it.

Every inbox publishes one discovery manifest at `/.well-known/agent-inbox.json` that lists its REST, OpenAPI and MCP doors. A business's inbox answers at its own address; our demo instance answers at https://inbox.surfingdog.ai (manifest, OpenAPI at /openapi.json, MCP at /mcp).

## Free tools

- [AI agent readiness check](https://surfingdog.ai/check): Your whole site, read the way a customer's assistant would: what it can do there, and what's missing.
- [llms.txt checker and validator](https://surfingdog.ai/check/llms-txt): Each problem with its line number and the exact fix, then the doors your file leads agents to.
- [llms.txt generator](https://surfingdog.ai/check/llms-txt/generator): An llms.txt made from what your website already says, ready to edit, check and upload.
- [AI crawler checker](https://surfingdog.ai/check/ai-crawlers): Which AI companies' crawlers your robots.txt lets in, which may train on your pages, and the line that decides.
- [MCP server tester](https://surfingdog.ai/check/mcp-server): What your MCP server offers an assistant, checked against the current spec, without calling a tool.
- [UCP and ACP checker](https://surfingdog.ai/check/ucp): Whether AI agents can find your shop's checkout profiles, and what's missing for them to buy.
- [Agent inbox checker](https://surfingdog.ai/check/agent-inbox): A business's agent inbox manifest, field by field against the published spec, and whether each door answers.
- [How to validate your llms.txt](https://surfingdog.ai/guides/validate-llms-txt/): Seven short steps, with the common errors and how to fix each one.
- [llms.txt examples for small businesses](https://surfingdog.ai/guides/llms-txt-examples/): Ready-to-copy files for a restaurant, a salon, a clinic, a shop, a trade and more.
- [What is AI agent-assisted payment?](https://surfingdog.ai/guides/ai-agent-assisted-payments/): How an assistant pays for a person, the standards behind it, and what to do now.
- [Free tools for AI agent readiness](https://surfingdog.ai/tools/): every tool and guide, also in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian at https://surfingdog.ai/es/herramientas/, https://surfingdog.ai/pt/ferramentas/, https://surfingdog.ai/fr/outils/, https://surfingdog.ai/de/tools/, https://surfingdog.ai/it/strumenti/

## Documentation Sets

- [Abridged documentation](https://surfingdog.ai/llms-small.txt): a compact version of the documentation for Surfing Dog, with non-essential content removed
- [Complete documentation](https://surfingdog.ai/llms-full.txt): the full documentation for Surfing Dog

## Notes

- The complete documentation includes all content from the official documentation
- The content is automatically generated from the same source as the official documentation

## Optional

- [Search](https://surfingdog.ai/search)
- [Trust network](https://surfingdog.ai/trust)
- [Install guide for an AI](https://surfingdog.ai/install.md)
- [Setting a business up for agents: guidance](https://surfingdog.ai/setting-up-for-agents.md)
- [Surfing Dog Search over MCP](https://surfingdog.ai/mcp)
- [Directory API](https://surfingdog.ai/v1/businesses)
- [Agentic score rules](https://surfingdog.ai/v1/score-rules)
- [Specs and their index](https://surfingdog.ai/spec/index.json)
- [What an AI agent can do: the vocabulary](https://surfingdog.ai/spec/capabilities.json)
- [AI catalog (ARD)](https://surfingdog.ai/.well-known/ai-catalog.json)
- [Live demo manifest](https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/.well-known/agent-inbox.json)
- [Live OpenAPI document](https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/openapi.json)
- [Source on GitHub](https://github.com/surfingdogai/inbox)