Show HN: Ax-check.com – Can agents use your product?(www.ax-check.com)
37 pointsby 0x63_Problems4 days ago14 comments
  • brettdav3 days ago
    Integrating live bots to demonstrate live visitor experiences is a nice touch. I got an unexpected blocker (`Default Python urllib User-Agent gets 403'd by anc.dev`) I am not able to reproduce yet. Can you expose the scripts that the agents generate?

    I took a different route with https://anc.dev (scored 100 on ax-check) and rely on a wider variety of compliance tests. Beyond websites, it also audits binaries (think CLI tooling) to help inclined developers ensure their tools are discoverable by and useful to agentic systems.

    • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
      You can reproduce that finding directly from python:

      ```

      >>> request.urlopen("https://anc.dev")

      [...traceback info...]

      urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden

      ```

      In this case (https://agents.withgauge.com/p/runs/40be763c-4678-4677-88df-...) the agent wrote a python script to test the site, and hit the error above. We don't have a full filesystem diff viewer in ax-check.com, although we do have that in the Gauge agents product itself.

      • brettdav3 days ago
        Interesting, thank you. I'll check whether a setting on CF might be interfering. The site checks headers for routing and response types, but it shouldn't affect access.
  • waterlooalex2 days ago
    I tried testing my site syncwith.com and it says its blocked, but its not clear to me why, any ideas? I tested with Claude and it doesn't find any issues like this.

    https://www.ax-check.com/syncwith.com

  • mastrchief1173 days ago
    I've been seeing these pop up recently, I think I saw Mintlify launched one too. Why the sudden increase in attention towards coding agents?
    • esafak3 days ago
      Welcome to HN...
  • Jemm2 days ago
    Rapidcam.app is a CAD / CAM for CNC and laser. The file format is designed for LLMs and for version control. The app has a in-built prompt generator and solver so you can use your own LLM.
  • 13173 days ago
    it wants a whole domain when the interesting thing i want it to try lives in a directory
    • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
      which URL is it? it's kind of a deep assumption since we're evaluating on ease-of-navigation from the homepage, and looking for /llms.txt etc. but there should be a way for me to add support
  • kinduff2 days ago
    In one of my examples the live coding sessions used a different domain to try and build something. Great tool! Got some good insights in other sessions.
  • pprotas3 days ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/ Gets an A grade for pricing… where is the pricing page again?
    • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
      The initial step of the scan looks at homepage content to try to figure out where to navigate next, it's getting confused by all the different products linked. Will fix this!
  • the10243 days ago
    How do you think about enabling fully agentic onboarding without proper human identification? It feels like any rate limiting would be pretty easy to get around.
    • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
      Each product is different (how much does it cost to serve a marginal user, how risky is it). But generally I think allowing ephemeral accounts like Cloudflare, or serving simulated/static accounts before a human claim can both work.

      For a lot of products it can just be an extension of the free tier I think too.

  • Farbod_memarian3 days ago
    Going to try this out for our MCP
    • brettdav3 days ago
      The mcp audit at https://anc.dev/ covers all flavors of mcp, including the recently launched webmcp. Remediation prompts, accessible equally by agents and humans, can help close any gaps. Usually one-shot, unless your site is crazy complicated.
  • eliaspro3 days ago
    Nice! This should help in making my stuff as inaccessible as possible to agents.
    • tkmcc3 days ago
      I've been working on https://switchfrog.com to help you with that :)
      • testycool3 days ago
        This is an awesome idea. I use agents all the time that way, so am not thrilled by potential consequences, but I love the idea from the platfroms' perspective.
    • howunfortunate3 days ago
      This seems like a good way to get hammered by tons of extra requests because agents can't efficiently figure out your site...
      • eliaspro2 days ago
        Which then again should provide me a detectable behavioral pattern, sufficient for an IP-ban.
    • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
      Are you mainly concerned about scraping? or anti-agents in general?
      • cyanydeez3 days ago
        what is the benefit of making any resource more available to agents?
        • boleary-gl3 days ago
          Agents are the new search engine - a majority of people are starting to get recommendations and answers from them. So asking this is like asking "what is the benefit of making any resource more available to search engines?"

          The answer is discoverability. which is pretty critical for any business

          • cyanydeez3 days ago
            ok smart guy. We live in a society.

            Your answer presents one side of an equation.

        • brabel3 days ago
          I've heard CTOs saying they don't consider buying any product that is not AI agent friendly. Which means they must come with AI skills, MCP Servers and so on that agents can use it to do stuff. You may not like it, but that's almost certainly going to be the future.
        • verdverm3 days ago
          agents are becoming the de facto standard interface for everything, whether you like it or not, so it depends on the intent you have for a project, or "product" as OP phrased it, which has a more contextual implication that the intent is to get others to buy it
          • cyanydeez3 days ago
            ok, great, you think an agent is going to buy your vacuum.

            How many of you guys are selling vacuums? ...

            • verdverm3 days ago
              ironically, I did sell a kirby many many years ago

              the idea is likely way more about business purchases and SaaS than consumer products, though I did have an agent do deep research to give me options when deciding on a new mattress

        • 0x63_Problems3 days ago
          Behind an agent is a human that might use the product. I think customers/consumers will demand that their personal/subscription agent can access the product.
          • xena3 days ago
            As someone that works for a company that gets a 100% score on ax-check, all the effort I've put into making it accessible for agents has not 10xed the growth numbers like I was told it would.
            • verdverm3 days ago
              The Ai growth looks more like the very-long-term 2% (technically productivity growth from innovation), avoid assuming the hypesters are even close to accurate in their predictions
              • cyanydeez3 days ago
                yeah, it looks more like parasitic exponetials, the same way when google started being the source for things instead of the portal.

                No ones shown there's any real ROI in a more virulent intermediary that has even less reason to view ads.

                • ericd3 days ago
                  > No ones shown there's any real ROI in a more virulent intermediary that has even less reason to view ads.

                  Good riddance?

                  Very happy to have my agent totally ignore the ads trying to hijack my attention.

                  • verdverm3 days ago
                    The ROI is for we the users, not the companies, only issues is that the agent's attention is way easier to hijack, so you have to maintain a different kind of attention when using them and never blindly trust their outputs.
    • dmitrygr3 days ago
      +1
  • fwlr3 days ago
    Claude, use AX-check to make my site score a zero. Make no mistakes
  • Jemaclus3 days ago
    [dead]
  • fabijanbajo2 days ago
    [dead]