Problem Statement
AX Score currently recommends creating an ai-plugin.json manifest and hosting it at /.well-known/ai-plugin.json. However, ChatGPT Plugins were fully deprecated and shut down in April 2024.
Timeline:
- March 19, 2024: Users could no longer start new plugin conversations
- April 9, 2024: All plugin-based chats were permanently disabled
- Replacement: ChatGPT Plugins were replaced by Custom GPTs with Actions, which use a completely different mechanism
The ai-plugin.json format is officially dead. No AI system currently reads or utilizes this file. Recommending it to users is misleading and wastes their development time on implementing a defunct standard.
References:
Proposed Solution
- Remove
ai-plugin.json from the scoring criteria and recommendations entirely
- Replace it with more relevant AI discoverability checks:
llms.txt detection (emerging standard, documented at llmstxt.org)
- Enhanced JSON-LD structured data analysis (WebSite, Article, Person, BreadcrumbList schemas)
- RSS/Atom feed detection
- AI crawler allowance in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.)
Alternatives Considered
- Keep but lower weight: Not recommended — the spec is literally dead with no consumers.
- Replace with MCP (Model Context Protocol): Could be relevant for API services but too niche for general scoring.
Use Case
As a website owner running npx ax-score, I want the recommendations to reflect currently active standards, not deprecated ones. Implementing ai-plugin.json today provides zero benefit to AI discoverability.
Additional Context
This is arguably a bug rather than a feature request, since the tool is recommending a discontinued standard. Prioritizing this fix would improve the tool's credibility.
Problem Statement
AX Score currently recommends creating an
ai-plugin.jsonmanifest and hosting it at/.well-known/ai-plugin.json. However, ChatGPT Plugins were fully deprecated and shut down in April 2024.Timeline:
The
ai-plugin.jsonformat is officially dead. No AI system currently reads or utilizes this file. Recommending it to users is misleading and wastes their development time on implementing a defunct standard.References:
Proposed Solution
ai-plugin.jsonfrom the scoring criteria and recommendations entirelyllms.txtdetection (emerging standard, documented at llmstxt.org)Alternatives Considered
Use Case
As a website owner running
npx ax-score, I want the recommendations to reflect currently active standards, not deprecated ones. Implementingai-plugin.jsontoday provides zero benefit to AI discoverability.Additional Context
This is arguably a bug rather than a feature request, since the tool is recommending a discontinued standard. Prioritizing this fix would improve the tool's credibility.