Show HN: ANML – A machine-first markup language for the agentic web (IETF Draft)
ANML is a new machine-first markup language aimed at enhancing the agentic web. Unlike HTML, which is designed for human users, ANML caters to autonomous agents that consume web content. The language simplifies the interaction between agents and services while ensuring privacy and structured workflows.
- ▪ANML is pronounced 'animal' and stands for a machine-first markup language.
- ▪It is designed specifically for autonomous agents that are the primary consumers of web content.
- ▪ANML files are referred to as 'duckuments', which are easy to read and author while containing essential information for agents.
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Record
| Original publisher | Anmlfoundation |
| Canonical URL | https://anmlfoundation.org |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 20:22:57 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T20:31:35.748Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T20:31:35.748Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | efFFHQwkFJxU |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Introducing ANML /ˈæn.ɪ.məl/ANML, pronounced “animal,” is a machine-first markup language designed for the agentic web. Where HTML serves humans, ANML serves the autonomous agents that are becoming the primary consumers of web content.We call ANML files “duckuments.”A duck moves along the water with effortless grace. Straightforward, easily understood, calm on the surface. But beneath the waterline there is a lot going on: structured interactions, disclosure constraints, workflow state, knowledge exchange, and behavioral guidance all working together.An ANML duckument looks simple to read and author, but it carries everything an autonomous agent needs to understand a service, respect privacy boundaries, navigate multi-step workflows, and act on behalf of its user with minimal inference…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Anmlfoundation.
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