The Website Specification

2 min read Original article ↗

What a good website does.

A platform-agnostic specification of all the technical details that matter for a website, from <title>to /.well-known/security.txt to WCAG contrast. Written for humans and agents.

How to use this site

  1. 01

    Audit

    Run the checklist against your site, or let your agent do it. Each item is a yes/no.

  2. 02

    Learn

    Open any item for what it is, why it matters, and how to implement it.

  3. 03

    Improve

    Fix what's missing on your site, then re-check.

  1. Added

    Added a page on Deprecation and Sunset headers

  2. Added

    Added a page on HTTP Digest Fields

  3. Changed

    Native single-open accordions with the details name attribute

Principles

What every page here is built on.

01

Standards, not opinions

Each topic links back to the source standard: WHATWG, W3C, IETF RFCs, WCAG, MDN, and the organisations defining the modern web.

02

Platform agnostic

Whether you ship WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3, Next.js, Astro, Hugo, a Django app, or plain HTML, the spec is the spec. Implementation hints follow it, not the other way round.

03

Built in the open

Every page has an Edit on GitHub link. PRs welcome. Sources credited on every page.

Let your agent query the spec.

The whole spec is available as an open MCP server (read-only, no auth), plus a published Agent Skill that teaches any compatible agent when and how to use it. Per-page Markdown is available via /llms.txt and Accept: text/markdown on any spec URL.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "specification-website": {
      "transport": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.specification.website/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Categories

Ten areas, mapped to widely-accepted standards.

All topics →