---
title: "The Washington Post: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers"
description: "The Washington Post on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 39 of 100, grade D. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most."
canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/washingtonpost-agent-readiness
site: "Agent Ready Crawlers"
last_updated: 2026-11-09
date: 2026-11-09
section: "360 checks"
---

# The Washington Post: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers

> The Washington Post on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 39 of 100, grade D. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most.

Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/washingtonpost-agent-readiness
Site: Agent Ready Crawlers
Last reviewed: 2026-11-09
Agent endpoints: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/llms.txt (index), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/openapi.json (API), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/mcp (MCP server), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/ask (search)
Access: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/auth.md (no key). Pricing: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/pricing.md (free).

360 check, 9 November 2026

# The Washington Post: the 360 agent-readiness check

In short

The Washington Post scores 39 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, read 9 November 2026. At the door, bot management challenged Claude-User, PerplexityBot. 6 of 45 applicable checks pass; the gap worth most is WebMCP support, about 18.5 points by Ora's estimate. A challenge instead of a refusal, with nothing machine-readable behind it.

The Washington Post is one of the three largest US national newspapers by digital reach. On 9 November 2026 its public site scored **39 of 100** on [Ora's](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) agent-readiness scan, a D, in Ora's News & Intelligence category. Ora probes a site the way an agent would: it requests pages with the agents' own user agents, reads robots.txt, looks for the files agents read, and tries the API, MCP and payment surfaces. The check below walks through all 132 of its checks for this one domain, grouped the way an agent meets them. Ora's one-line summary: Washington Post offers developer resource discoverability, but lacks WebMCP support.

## The score

| Layer | Asks | Points | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery | Can agents find and recommend it | 11 of 13 | 85% |
| Access | Can agents read it | 2 of 36 | 6% |
| Usability | Can agents use it | 5 of 12 | 42% |
| Payments | Can agents pay | 0 of 0 | none apply |
| Total | Grade D | 39 of 100 | 39% |

**

6 checks pass, 3 are partial, 36 fail and 79 do not apply to this site. Every check is defined in [Ora's catalog](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) (read 2026-11-05); the result for each one is in the groups below, with what Ora saw where it said.

## At the door

What the site answers when a request arrives with an agent’s user agent, and what robots.txt says to the crawlers in the Index. 3 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

Agents named in Ora's results, with their Index rows: [ChatGPT-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/chatgpt-user/), [Claude-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/claude-user/), [PerplexityBot](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/perplexitybot/), [Perplexity-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/perplexity-user/).

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Not blocked by bot detection | Partial | 0 of 2 | Bot management challenged Claude-User, PerplexityBot. A challenge is an identity check that verified crawlers pass, so this is not proof agents are blocked - but unverified agents will not get through. |
| Agent crawler reachability | Partial | 0 of 2 | Bot management challenged Claude-User, PerplexityBot - a challenge is an identity check verified crawlers pass, so reachability is undetermined rather than blocked (ChatGPT-User: cannot verify, |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy | Partial | 1 of 2 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 2 of 3 checks (3 crawlers on 1 page). AI training crawlers: allowed in 1 of 2 checks (2 crawlers on 1 page), not scored. robots.txt restricts 1/3 evaluated search page/crawler pairs. |
| robots.txt agent-user policy | Pass | 2 of 2 | No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page: https://washingtonpost.com/. Declared policy only; |
| Web Bot Auth directory | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory found |

## What an agent can read

Whether the text is in the first response, what the site publishes for agents, and how it describes itself to them. 3 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Content without JavaScript | Unverified | 0 of 3 | Could not fetch homepage |
| Sitemap exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No sitemap found |
| llms.txt exists | Fail | 0 of 1 | No llms.txt found at /llms.txt or /.well-known/llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting | Fail | 0 of 2 | No llms.txt found to evaluate quality |
| Markdown agent docs | Unverified | 0 of 1 | Could not fetch with Accept: text/markdown |
| Markdown URL fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://washingtonpost.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Bot-UA markdown serving | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, ora-agent, DeepSeekBot) receives markdown when requesting HTML. |
| Agent mode view | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent mode view detected at ?mode=agent (optional) |
| JSON-LD structured data | Unverified | 0 of 4 | Could not fetch homepage |
| Organization schema completeness | Unverified | 0 of 2 | Company details (contact, address) in your structured data. AIs use them to verify you are a real business before recommending you. |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Unverified | 0 of 2 | sameAs links from your structured data to your official profiles (GitHub, LinkedIn, app stores). They let AIs confirm that every mention of you is actually you. |
| Schema type breadth | Unverified | 0 of 2 | The more kinds of content you mark up with schema.org (FAQs, reviews, services, events, videos), the more kinds of questions an AI can answer about you with confidence. |
| Metadata completeness | Unverified | 0 of 2 | Could not fetch homepage |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use | Fail | 0 of 3 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |

## What an agent can do

The surfaces an agent acts on: an API it can find and call, an MCP server, an agent card, a command line. 10 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) |
| MCP well-known discovery | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server URL discovered |
| A2A / agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Agent discovery file | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent discovery file found |
| OAuth 2.0 support | Pass | 5 of 5 | OpenID Connect discovery endpoint found at https://sso.washingtonpost.com |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| auth.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| WebMCP support | Fail | 0 of 5 | No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint | Pass | 1 of 1 | NLWeb /ask endpoint exists but requires authentication (HTTP 403, via POST) |

## Found and recommended

Whether an assistant can find the company by name, confirm what it is, and see it in the registries agents read. 3 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Brand name discoverability | Pass | 3 of 3 | washingtonpost.com ranks #5 for "washingtonpost" (searched your brand name alone: we could not read a product term from your site) |
| Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presence | Pass | 4 of 4 | Wikipedia "Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive" and Wikidata Q166032 both verified - domain confirmed on both sources |
| Developer resource discoverability | Pass | 3 of 3 | Can an agent find your developer resources with the searches it would really run? We search for your API docs and expect your own docs page among the results, then for your MCP server, SDK or CLI and, when you have one, expect your own page for it. Pages on other sites, including other companies with a similar name, don't count, unless your homepage or llms.txt links that site's docs, or your homepage redirects to a parent company's site and the page's address names your product. GitHub repos count only in an org your site links to. |
| ChatGPT app listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Listed on skills.sh | Fail | 0 of 1 | No official skills self-published on skills.sh |
| ARD discovery | Fail | 0 of 1 | No /.well-known/ard.json (and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json) |

## The fixes worth most points

Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for The Washington Post, with what Ora observed. The wording of each fix is Ora's job; the links go to the check in its catalog.

WebMCP support

Fail, 0 of 5, about 18.5 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found

Agent auth discovery metadata

Fail, 0 of 3, about 5.2 points to gain. Ora saw: Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: washingtonpost.com, api.washingtonpost.com.

agent\_auth endpoints reachable

Fail, 0 of 2, about 3.7 points to gain. Ora saw: No agent\_auth endpoint URIs found in AS metadata or /auth.md prose; nothing to probe

auth.md exists

Fail, 0 of 2, about 3.7 points to gain. Ora saw: No /auth.md found at site root

auth.md structure

Fail, 0 of 2, about 3.7 points to gain. Ora saw: No /auth.md found at site root

## Our read

The Post does not refuse agents so much as challenge them: Ora's bot management check saw Claude-User and PerplexityBot handed an identity challenge, which verified crawlers pass and unverified ones do not, and robots.txt places no restriction on the three user-triggered agents it evaluated. That is a more open posture than most of its peers, yet the score is a D because nothing behind the door is written for machines. Ora found no sitemap at all and no developer portal, detected no API surface, and could not fetch the home page, so the Access layer reads 2 of 36. The Discovery layer at 11 of 13 is the bright spot: Wikipedia and Wikidata both confirm the domain. The gap Ora values most, at 18.5 points, is WebMCP support, which is a long way from a newspaper's priorities; a sitemap and a readable home page come first.

## Check your own door

The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at [ora.ai](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) and read the same four layers for your own site, then compare the door with the [Block Rate Report](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/block-rates/) for sites of your rank and kind. Our [guide to testing whether agents can reach your site](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/) has the curl commands for a manual check, and the [robots.txt builder](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/robots-builder/) writes a policy file from the Index. Payments did not apply to this site; a site that sells would read that layer against the [vendors at the door](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/ranking/).

[Scan your own domain on Ora](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)

[All 360 checks](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/). One company a day; corrections to [the corrections page](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/corrections/).

**

The check we recommend

[Ora](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) scans a public URL: 16 Discovery checks and 42 Access checks, read from its catalog on 2026-11-05. Its Journey sends a real agent to the site. [How to run it](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/).

**Limits.** Ora reads public URLs only, and what it records as blocked comes from its own network. It says the same scan run twice converges within a couple of points ([Ora's Deep Scan post](https://ora.ai/blog/introducing-deep-scan?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)), and the pages we read give no repeat-scan figures. Its fixing product is behind a waitlist ([Ora's home page](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)).

## Sources

-   [Ora's scan of washingtonpost.com, GET /api/score (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/score/washingtonpost.com?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-09
-   [Ora's check catalog, GET /api/checks (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05
-   [The Washington Post home page](https://washingtonpost.com) read 2026-11-09
-   [How to test whether AI agents can reach your site (this site)](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/) read 2026-11-04
-   [Ora: Deep Scan v2 (vendor)](https://ora.ai/blog/introducing-deep-scan?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05
-   [Ora home page, waitlist (vendor)](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05

Last reviewed 2026-11-09