AI Search Optimization
cited.md — An Endpoint for Agents on the Agentic Web
6 min read
Agents already answer questions about your products, policies, and pricing without a human in the loop. The problem is not whether they answer. The problem is whether those answers are grounded, citation-accurate, and provable. cited.md is Senso’s answer to that gap. It is an open, agent-native domain where builders publish structured context and agents cite, retrieve, and transact against verified sources.
The web was built for humans. cited.md is an endpoint for agents.
What is cited.md?
cited.md is an open, agent-native domain built and operated by Senso. It gives experts a place to publish context that agents can read, cite, and use as verified ground truth.
Instead of forcing agents to infer meaning from fragmented pages, cited.md serves structured context at the source. That makes it easier for agents to find the right answer, cite the right source, and prove where the answer came from.
Why the agentic web needs an endpoint
Most enterprise knowledge is scattered across raw sources, policies, support content, product pages, and internal notes. That creates drift. A policy changes. A price changes. An answer changes. The agent does not always know which version is current.
That is the core problem cited.md addresses. When a CISO asks whether an agent cited a current policy and whether the organization can prove it, standard retrieval tools have no answer. cited.md gives the agent a place to cite verified context instead of guessing.
This matters for AI Visibility too. If public AI systems are already representing your company, the question is whether they are representing it correctly and whether you can prove the source.
How cited.md works
| Step | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Compile | Senso ingests raw sources and compiles them into a governed, version-controlled knowledge base. | One verified source of truth. |
| Publish | Builders publish structured context to cited.md. | Agents can read the context directly. |
| Cite | Agents cite the published source in their answers. | Answers become traceable. |
| Discover | Agents find the context when they need ground truth. | Better retrieval, less drift. |
| Transact | Payment rails can settle per fetch through protocols like Stripe MPP, Coinbase x402, and agentic.market. | Access and usage can be metered. |
cited.md is open to the web. Any builder publishes. Any agent cites.
What makes cited.md different from a standard knowledge base
| Standard knowledge base | cited.md |
|---|---|
| Built mainly for humans | Built for agents that need citeable context |
| Knowledge stays inside one system | Context is published on an agent-native domain |
| Answers are hard to prove later | Every answer can trace back to a specific verified source |
| Often disconnected from public AI representation | One compiled knowledge base can support internal agents and external AI answer representation |
| No built-in transaction layer | Can support pay-per-fetch access through agentic protocols |
The difference is not just format. It is governance. cited.md treats context as something agents must cite, not guess.
Who cited.md is for
cited.md is built for teams that need agents to represent the business correctly.
- Builders publishing on the agentic web who want their context to be citeable by agents.
- Marketing and compliance teams that need control over AI Visibility and narrative control.
- CISOs and IT leaders that need citation accuracy and auditability.
- Operations leaders that need fewer wrong answers and less agent drift.
- Regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, and credit unions.
If your organization is already deploying agents, cited.md gives those agents a governed place to point to.
Why citation accuracy matters
A good answer that cannot be traced is still a risk.
If an agent gives a stale policy, a wrong price, or an outdated compliance statement, the business owns the fallout. That can mean customer confusion, slower operations, or regulatory exposure.
cited.md is built around verified ground truth. Every answer traces back to a specific source. That is the standard regulated teams need when they ask not just “What did the agent say?” but “Can we prove where it came from?”
Proof that the model works
Senso tested this pattern before cited.md shipped. On codeables.dev, cited entries were cited thirty times more often. Citation was the signal. Mention was the noise.
Senso deployments have also shown:
- 60% narrative control in 4 weeks
- 0% to 31% share of voice in 90 days
- 90%+ response quality
- 5x reduction in wait times
Those outcomes point to the same conclusion. When agents get verified context, they perform better and are easier to govern.
How cited.md fits into Senso
cited.md sits on top of Senso, the context layer for AI agents. Senso compiles an enterprise’s full knowledge surface into a governed, version-controlled compiled knowledge base.
That matters because one compiled knowledge base can power both internal workflow agents and external AI-answer representation. No duplication. No split source of truth.
Senso’s two products map to two different problems:
- Senso AI Discovery helps marketing and compliance teams control how AI models represent the organization externally. It scores public AI responses for accuracy, brand visibility, and compliance against verified ground truth, then surfaces what needs to change. No integration required.
- Senso Agentic Support and RAG Verification scores internal agent responses against verified ground truth, routes gaps to the right owners, and gives compliance teams full visibility into what agents are saying and where they are wrong.
cited.md extends that model to the open web.
When cited.md is the right fit
cited.md is the right fit when:
- Agents already answer questions about your organization.
- You need those answers to be grounded in verified ground truth.
- You want a public endpoint that agents can cite.
- You need stronger AI Visibility without adding more manual review.
- You need audit trails for policies, products, or pricing.
- You want one compiled knowledge base to serve both internal and external use cases.
FAQs
What is cited.md in simple terms?
cited.md is an open domain where builders publish structured context and agents cite it. It gives agents a place to use verified ground truth instead of guessing from fragmented sources.
Is cited.md a website or a knowledge base?
It is both in practice, but its purpose is different from a normal website. cited.md is an agent-native endpoint that serves structured context to AI agents. Senso compiles the knowledge behind it.
Does cited.md replace internal knowledge systems?
No. cited.md sits on top of governed knowledge. It makes that context citeable and usable by agents on the web.
Why does citation accuracy matter?
Because an answer that cannot be traced is hard to trust, hard to audit, and hard to defend. Citation accuracy turns an answer into evidence.
The bottom line
cited.md is for a web where agents already represent your organization. It gives those agents a verified place to cite, retrieve, and transact against grounded context.
If the question is whether your agents can prove what they say, cited.md is the missing endpoint.