Show HN: Ax-check.com – Can agents use your product?
ax-check.com makes agent onboarding measurable and actionable, but the brief discussion shows an unresolved tension: some see agent accessibility as a risk to minimize, while others question whether making resources more available to agents is beneficial at all.
The brief
ax-check.com is a tool from Gauge that scores how well coding agents can onboard to a product. It checks key pages such as the homepage, llms.txt, pricing, and docs, tests whether those pages can serve Markdown, and runs three coding agents in sandboxes to attempt end-to-end onboarding. It returns a scorecard, suggested fixes, and full traces, including whether agents can complete onboarding autonomously without being blocked by a login wall.
- The tool focuses on the pages that matter most in observed agent traffic: homepage, llms.txt, pricing, and docs.
- It tests content negotiation for Markdown because the author says this helps agents complete tasks faster.
- It runs actual coding agents in sandboxes and shows full traces of their onboarding attempts.
- It surfaces issues such as hallucinated URLs, inaccurate docs instructions, and product confusion.
- It checks whether agents can complete a fully working onboarding autonomously without being blocked by a login wall.
- The author argues that safe autonomous agent onboarding will become table stakes for developer tools within a year.
In the discussion
The supplied discussion is sparse and mostly skeptical. One commenter frames the tool as useful for making their own product less accessible to agents, while replies question whether the concern is scraping specifically or anti-agent sentiment generally, and what benefit there is in making resources more available to agents.
Using the tool to reduce agent accessibility
One commenter responds positively to the project but says it should help make their own stuff as inaccessible as possible to agents.
Clarifying the anti-agent concern
A reply asks whether the commenter is mainly concerned about scraping or about agents in general, distinguishing two possible motivations for blocking agent access.
Questioning the value of agent accessibility
A deeper reply challenges the premise by asking what benefit there is in making any resource more available to agents.