# A field guide to Agent Experience. > Practical guides on Agent Experience: agent-facing product design, tools, documentation, evaluation, delegated action, and recovery. Section: Guides Canonical: https://agentexperience.tech/insights/ Learn the basics first, then find practical help for the part of your product you want to improve. [Start the reading order](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/#start-here) [See every page on the site](https://agentexperience.tech/explore/) Topics - [Foundations](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/topics/foundations/) - [Discovery and documentation](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/topics/discovery/) - [Tools and interfaces](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/topics/tools/) - [Workflows, trust, and recovery](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/topics/workflows/) - [Evaluation and improvement](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/topics/evaluation/) ## The reading order Each guide builds on the one before, from what AX means to running a review of your own. 1. [What is Agent Experience?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/what-is-agent-experience/): Say which AX you mean before you change anything. 13 min read 2. [An Agent Experience (AX) framework](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-experience-framework/): Place any problem on one path: orient, discover, act, collaborate, learn. 10 min read 3. [Build websites agents can understand](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-friendly-websites/): Check how agents find and read your public pages. 11 min read 4. [Write tool descriptions an agent can act on](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/tool-descriptions/): Write tools an agent can choose correctly, and tell apart from their neighbours. 8 min read 5. [Agent workflow design: scoping the first one](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/start-with-workflows/): Scope one bounded job, so the later steps have a real workflow to work on. 7 min read 6. [Human approval workflows for AI agents](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/approval-is-a-workflow/): Gate consequential actions, and make sure what a person approves is what runs. 24 min read 7. [How do you measure agent experience?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/measure-agent-experience/): Measure paths rather than scores, and know which claims a metric cannot support. 17 min read 8. [Run an Agent Experience review](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/run-an-ax-review/): Put the earlier steps together in a review of one real workflow. 9 min read ## Start here: what AX is For anyone new to AX: what the term means, the framework this site uses, and what the people who do the work actually do. - [What is Agent Experience?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/what-is-agent-experience/): A practical definition of AX, where the term came from, the meanings it carries, and the questions it helps a team ask. 13 min read - [An Agent Experience (AX) framework](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-experience-framework/): A five-part map of where agent work breaks (orient, discover, act, collaborate, learn), a four-step method, and a rubric that gives one job a profile across six tracks, each rated at one of four levels. 10 min read - [Five meanings of agent experience](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/meanings-of-agent-experience/): Product AX, coding-agent AX, contact-centre AX, real-estate and insurance AX, and delegated-job AX: who uses each, and how to tell which one a page means. 12 min read - [What does an AX engineer do?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/what-does-an-ax-engineer-do/): The agent experience role as public job postings and team pages describe it: the work, the skills, and how it differs from DevRel and DX. 12 min read ## Guides by topic Not sure which one fits? [The field map shows where each topic sits](https://agentexperience.tech/research/) ## Help agents find and understand your product For teams whose website, docs or sign-up an AI agent has to find and read before it can help anyone. - [Build websites agents can understand](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-friendly-websites/): Clear structure, stable interactions, and meaningful labels help both people and agents navigate a site. 11 min read - [Write agent-readable documentation](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/make-documentation-legible/): What AI agents read, how to shape a page around a single decision, and how to keep the text true as the product moves. 8 min read - [AX, UX, DX, and GEO: where each fits](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/ax-vs-ux-dx-geo/): How the related disciplines connect, and the different product problem each one describes. 14 min read - [Does llms.txt actually work?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/state-of-llms-txt/): What adoption and server-log studies show, and where the evidence is limited. 11 min read - [The state of agent-web standards](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-web-standards/): Compare agent-facing standards by who reads them and what they help an agent do. 15 min read - [Agentic Resource Discovery, implemented](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agentic-resource-discovery/): What ARD is, how ard.json relates to MCP's ai-catalog.json, and a copy-pasteable manifest for a content site. 19 min read - [Let agents start before anyone signs up](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/let-agents-start-before-sign-up/): Claim-later onboarding: the agent provisions a bounded resource now, and a person claims it later through a link. 17 min read ## Make tools easier to choose and use For teams that give agents tools, an API or written instructions, and want the agent to pick the right one and use it well. - [Write tool descriptions an agent can act on](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/tool-descriptions/): The text around a tool affects whether an agent can find it, choose it, and use it well. 8 min read - [Agent tool catalogues need a pruning strategy](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-tool-catalogs/): A small, clearly separated catalogue is usually easier to choose from than a long list of overlapping actions. 8 min read - [An agent dashboard should show the next decision](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/show-the-next-decision/): A run view should tell an operator whether to approve, retry, stop or escalate, and why. 7 min read - [How to expose a 3,000-operation API to agents](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/large-api-surfaces-for-agents/): Seven patterns for large API surfaces: search first, schema on demand, rehearsal, truthful exits, an escape hatch, curated descriptions and a context budget. 14 min read - [Keep agent instructions true](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/keep-agent-instructions-true/): How to catch drift between what AGENTS.md, llms.txt, skills and MCP instructions say and what production does. 10 min read ## Handle approvals, failures, and handoffs For teams whose agents take real actions that a person has to approve, recover from, or pick up halfway. - [Agent workflow design: scoping the first one](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/start-with-workflows/): A bounded workflow with a real edge shows you where judgement, context and control matter. 7 min read - [Agent context handoff: carry the reason for the work](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/preserve-context-through-handoffs/): Five things vanish at a handoff. A small structured record keeps intent, constraints, changed state, authority and evidence together. 8 min read - [Human approval workflows for AI agents](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/approval-is-a-workflow/): Consequential actions need a clear pause, real choices, and a way back into the work. 24 min read - [Agent error recovery: design the path back](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/design-for-recovery/): Four fields turn an error into a decision: what failed, whether state changed, whether a retry is safe, and what input would fix it. 8 min read - [Record retries as product history](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/retries-are-product-history/): Visible attempts show whether a system recovered cleanly or made people do more work. 8 min read - [Approval, handoff and recovery patterns for AI agents](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/approval-handoff-recovery-patterns/): Seventeen named patterns for the human side of agent work, each with when to use it, how it fails and a live example. 21 min read ## Find evidence for what to improve next For teams that need to check how ready one job is, measure a change, and decide what to fix first. - [The Open Agent-Readiness Rubric](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-readiness-rubric/): Check one real job across six tracks, from finding the page to handing the result back, and get a profile instead of a score. 25 min read - [Evaluate the decisions in an agent workflow](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/evaluating-agent-workflows/): Evaluate tool choice, handoffs, and recovery alongside the final result. 8 min read - [How do you measure agent experience?](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/measure-agent-experience/): The key agent experience metrics in four families, how to compare a change against a bare baseline, and the claims none of them can support. 17 min read - [Run an Agent Experience review](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/run-an-ax-review/): A repeatable way to inspect one meaningful workflow and choose the next product improvement. 9 min read - [Agent evaluation loop: run, judge, triage, fix, repeat](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/build-a-reliable-agent-evaluation-loop/): Six stages, a fixed task set, and a failure taxonomy that names the first decision that broke instead of the last error. 11 min read - [Agent readiness scores compared](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-readiness-scores-compared/): Cloudflare, Lighthouse, Is Agentic, AFDocs scores, AXIS and the 2027.dev tier list: what each one scores, how, and what it cannot tell you. 16 min read - [Agent experience examples you can check](https://agentexperience.tech/insights/agent-experience-examples/): Seventeen annotated, public AX design decisions, mapped to the rubric, with a checklist and a template for recording your own. 16 min read