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

Researchers submitted a paper on 10 Sep 2026 proposing terms.txt, a 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. The paper argues the open web's unwritten bargain between sites and search engines is breaking under AI crawlers and agents, noting automated clients now make up most requests and the largest AI platforms fetch thousands of pages for each visitor they return. A dependency-free implementation adds 0.20 to 0.65 ms per request on one vCPU.

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 Current browse context: cs.NI References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer What is the Explorer? https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html arxiv-bibliographic-explorer Connected Papers What is Connected Papers? https://www.connectedpapers.com/about Litmaps What is Litmaps? https://www.litmaps.co/ scite Smart Citations What are Smart Citations? https://www.scite.ai/ Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv What is alphaXiv? https://alphaxiv.org/ CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers What is CatalyzeX? https://www.catalyzex.com DagsHub What is DagsHub? https://dagshub.com/ Gotit.pub What is GotitPub? http://gotit.pub/faq Hugging Face What is Huggingface? https://huggingface.co/huggingface ScienceCast What is ScienceCast? https://sciencecast.org/welcome Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower What are Influence Flowers? https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/ CORE Recommender What is CORE? https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html .