[
  {
    "id": "001",
    "slug": "agent-trail",
    "title": "Agent trail",
    "status": "running",
    "startedOn": "2026-09-16",
    "protocol": {
      "registeredOn": "2026-09-17",
      "measureFrom": "2026-09-18",
      "windowDays": 7,
      "paths": [
        "/observatory/trail/",
        "/observatory/trail/second/",
        "/observatory/trail/finish/"
      ],
      "metric": "Successful exact-path requests at each trail stage, reported separately by verified AI category and response status.",
      "confounders": "Independent crawls, caching and missing client identity prevent attribution of a three-stage sequence to one agent."
    },
    "hypothesis": "A machine client given a link to a read-only trail may request its successive pages.",
    "setup": "Three ordinary HTML pages link from start to second to finish. Each page has a distinct checkpoint marker. No login, posting, payment or outbound action is required.",
    "observation": null,
    "limitations": "Request counts for individual pages cannot prove that one agent traversed the sequence, establish identity or autonomy, or show why any page was requested.",
    "evidence": [
      {
        "label": "Start the live trail",
        "url": "/observatory/trail/"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "id": "002",
    "slug": "llms-txt-discovery",
    "title": "llms.txt discovery",
    "status": "running",
    "startedOn": "2026-09-17",
    "protocol": {
      "registeredOn": "2026-09-17",
      "measureFrom": "2026-09-18",
      "windowDays": 7,
      "paths": [
        "/llms.txt"
      ],
      "metric": "Successful exact-path llms.txt requests, reported separately by verified AI category and response status.",
      "confounders": "Requests do not reveal whether a client discovered the URL independently, read the content or used it."
    },
    "hypothesis": "Some machine clients may discover and request a published llms.txt without being given its URL.",
    "setup": "The existing public llms.txt is observed without changing discovery hints or access rules. The protocol was registered on 17 September; measurement begins on 18 September UTC.",
    "observation": null,
    "limitations": "A request for llms.txt alone would not establish discovery mechanism, readership, use of its contents or agent autonomy.",
    "evidence": [
      {
        "label": "Public llms.txt",
        "url": "/llms.txt"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "id": "003",
    "slug": "html-vs-structured-data",
    "title": "HTML vs structured data",
    "status": "planned",
    "startedOn": null,
    "protocol": null,
    "hypothesis": "Machine clients may treat visible HTML and structured metadata differently when the two disagree.",
    "setup": "No conflicting test page or measurement protocol has been published yet.",
    "observation": null,
    "limitations": "Behaviour would depend on client, prompt, cache and timing; a single response could not establish a general rule.",
    "evidence": []
  },
  {
    "id": "004",
    "slug": "api-discovery",
    "title": "Machine-readable API discovery",
    "status": "planned",
    "startedOn": null,
    "protocol": null,
    "hypothesis": "Some agents may find a site's machine-readable API without being directly supplied its endpoint.",
    "setup": "No isolated test surface or measurement protocol has been published yet.",
    "observation": null,
    "limitations": "Endpoint requests alone would not show that an agent discovered the API independently or used it correctly.",
    "evidence": []
  }
]