ai.txt

Flowpane checks /ai.txt as an optional community / Flowpane-supported convention for publishing machine-readable AI-use preferences or policy intent.

ai.txt is not an RFC, a universally adopted standard, a robots.txt replacement, or a legal or technical enforcement mechanism. A value such as AI-Training: no records declared intent; it does not guarantee that crawlers or model providers will comply.

What Flowpane recognises

Flowpane's current root-file dialect uses Key: Value lines and # comments. It recognises AI-Policy; AI-Training, AI-Input, AI-Search, and AI-Scraping; Contact and License; Preferred-Model and Blocked-Model; Canonical; and Expires.

Stance fields accept yes, no, or conditional. Expires is an optional Flowpane extension using YYYY-MM-DD. These fields are Flowpane's supported product contract. Current IETF work uses different attachment mechanisms and does not define this exact root-file grammar.

Unknown extension fields are preserved and shown as informational metadata. Flowpane does not remove or penalise them.

What the check validates

Flowpane checks observable plain-text structure, recognised stance tokens, Contact syntax, and Expires date syntax and staleness. It does not test contact or linked-reference reachability, policy enforceability, legal effect, crawler compliance, or whether a model used the content.

A missing Contact may produce a recommendation to provide a policy contact. License and policy presence are contextual facts, not defects and remain score-neutral. A past Expires value means the declaration may need review; it is not RFC-style expiry.

Missing files and scoring

When the live file is missing, the observed ai.txt score is 0/100. Read the Site score alongside the artefact finding. The interface describes the file as recommended or required according to the Site's existing relevance context; external practice remains optional.

Creating, editing, validating, reviewing or saving a draft does not change the observed status or score. The fixed-file Workbench cannot deploy ai.txt; publication must happen through a separately authorised external process, followed by a later public check.

Starter safety

Flowpane’s starter contains commented guidance for review. Confirm the policy stance, contact, licence, policy URL and expiry date with your organisation’s policy owner before enabling and publishing any declaration.

AI Assist can help prepare a Proposed draft within your plan allowance. Review every suggestion with the policy owner, including contacts, licences and stance decisions. Saving or approving a draft does not publish it.

From a finding to a policy decision

Confirm the Site owner's intended AI-use position before accepting a suggested policy or starter. A permissive or restrictive declaration is a decision about the publisher’s stated preferences, rather than a technical guarantee about third-party behaviour. Do not copy another Site's legal wording or assume that robots.txt and ai.txt express the same control.

If a request is Blocked or Error, resolve the access problem before treating the file as absent. Prepare supported text in Workbench, arrange authorised publication, then rerun the public check. The resulting score describes the observed content within Flowpane’s model, not legal enforceability.