# Terms.txt: A Consent and Compensation Protocol for Agentic Web Access

> Source: <https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11152>
> Published: 2026-09-12 02:07:07+00:00

# Computer Science > Networking and Internet Architecture

  [Submitted on 10 Sep 2026]

# Title:terms.txt: A Consent and Compensation Protocol for Agentic Web Access

[View PDF](/pdf/2609.11152)

[HTML (experimental)](https://arxiv.org/html/2609.11152v1)

Abstract:The open web ran on an unwritten bargain: sites admitted crawlers, and search engines sent visitors back. Public measurements show that bargain breaking under AI crawlers and agents. Automated clients now make up most requests, training dominates Cloudflare-classified crawling, and the largest AI platforms fetch thousands of pages for each visitor they return. The web's common control, [this http URL](http://robots.txt), cannot express identity, purpose, terms, or price, can be circumvented, and newer alternatives are largely proprietary CDN features. We specify [this http URL](http://terms.txt), a [this http URL](http://robots.txt)-style file for per-path, per-purpose machine-access terms, plus an origin-enforced exchange using Web Bot Auth signatures, signed intent, delegation tokens, HTTP 402 negotiation, and signed receipts. We define what the exchange can enforce, audit, and leave to contract. A dependency-free implementation adds 0.20 to 0.65 ms per request on one vCPU.
    

## Submission history

From: Rajarshi Chowdhury [
[view email](/show-email/0aa98375/2609.11152)]

**[v1]** Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:01:08 UTC (339 KB)

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