If you've recently tested your website using Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse, you may have noticed a new check under the Agentic Browsing category called “ARD manifest is valid.”
Here's a quick way to satisfy this validation using a minimal JSON file, without installing plugins or configuring complex agentic services.
Step 1: Log in to your website's hosting control panel (cPanel, DirectAdmin, or similar).
Step 2: Open File Manager and navigate to your website's document root, typically:
public_html/
Step 3: Look for a folder named:
.well-known
If this folder doesn't exist, create a new folder with exactly that name, including the dot (.) at the beginning.
💡 Tip: Enable “Show Hidden Files” in File Manager if you cannot see the .well-known folder.
Step 4: Inside the .well-known folder, create a file named:
ard.json
Your final file path should look like this:
public_html/.well-known/ard.json
Step 5: Open the file and paste the following JSON:
{
"entries": []
}
Save the file.
Step 6: Open the following URL in your browser:
https://yourdomain.com/.well-known/ard.json
Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain.
You should see the JSON content without a 404, 403, or other error.
Step 7: Run your website through PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse again and check the ARD manifest validation result.
This simple approach is suitable when:
The empty entries array is allowed by the current ARD manifest schema and can pass Lighthouse's validation.
Avoid this shortcut when:
For these cases, you should create a proper ARD manifest with resource identifiers, names, media types, endpoints, and relevant discovery information.
An empty manifest does not advertise any resources. It only provides a valid manifest structure.
Even with correct JSON, validation may fail or the audit may not recognize your file if:
ai-catalog.json location.
If your website uses a custom document root or a different hosting architecture, place the file wherever it becomes publicly accessible at /.well-known/ard.json.
ARD stands for Agentic Resource Discovery.
Google announced the ARD specification on June 17, 2026, to help AI agents and registries discover and verify capabilities published across the web.
ARD can describe resources such as MCP servers, A2A agents, agent skills, and other tools or services.
An ARD manifest is normally published at:
/.well-known/ard.json
The ARD v0.91 specification, dated August 26, 2026, requires a top-level entries array but does not require that array to contain any entries.
Lighthouse support:
rel="ard" while retaining legacy compatibility.
This explains why an empty entries array can pass schema validation: it is a valid array containing zero resource declarations.
Passing the ARD manifest audit does not mean:
Also, if no ARD manifest is published or advertised, Lighthouse may simply mark the audit as Not Applicable, which is not necessarily an error.
This method is useful for basic manifest validation, not as a substitute for actual agentic resource discovery.
Sometimes, a two-line JSON file is enough to satisfy a technical validation check. Just understand what you're validating! 🚀