Herald is in early access. Plans and prices may change before launch. Agori Labs
Guide 04

The AI-readiness checklist for sellers

Everything that makes your store readable to AI, in the order to do it. Most of the high-impact work is free (it costs effort rather than money), and you can start this afternoon. The rest is ongoing infrastructure, which is the part Herald is designed to automate. The list is the same for a small shop or a big brand.

~7 min readStart today, freeUpdated 2026
From invisible to AI-ready, one rung at a time
Clear titles & plain facts Attributes & identifiers Schema & structure Trust signals Published & kept in sync START · hard for AI to read ★ AI-ready
★ AI-ready Published & kept in sync Trust signals Schema & structure Attributes & identifiers Clear titles & plain facts START · hard for AI to read

Swipe the diagram to see all of it →

Getting AI-ready is a climb, and the free rungs do most of it. Each item you fix makes your store more readable to AI. Herald is being built to carry you the rest of the way.

The shape of it

Two halves: what you do, what Herald is built to do

Getting AI-ready splits cleanly in two. One half is edits you can make yourself, for free, right now. The other half is technical and ongoing, the kind of work that quietly eats a seller's week. Knowing which half you're in tells you where to spend your time.

The two halves
Foundation · DIY

The stuff you control

Titles, facts, use-case language, basic schema, a couple of outside mentions, all on zero budget.
Cost: freeTime: an afternoon → a week
Infrastructure · Herald

The stuff that eats your week

A clean page per product, continuous sync, intent coverage, referral tracking and agent-ready data. Herald is designed to do this and keep it current.
Cost: your time…or automated
Do the free half yourself, because it makes a real difference. The infrastructure half is where most sellers stall, and where Herald is designed to take over.
The checklist

In the order to do it

Work top to bottom. The first tier is cheap and high-impact, and most "invisible" stores get fixed here. Don't skip ahead to the technical tier until the basics are done.

Tier 1

This afternoon, free, highest impact

~2 hrs
  • Rename products the way people ask: "organic cotton sleep mask" instead of "The Luna." This is the biggest lever.
  • Move every fact out of images into text: materials, size, specs. AI can't read a photo.
  • Say who it's for and when, like "gift for a gardener" or "for wide feet." AI matches products to people.
  • Fill every attribute field: material, size, style, occasion. Blank fields are missed matches.
Tier 2

This week, free, a little more effort

~half a day
  • Label your product facts for machines, with price and availability as data (Product & Offer schema).
  • Add your brand and identifiers everywhere, consistently. This lets AI match you across sources.
  • Write a real Q&A / FAQ block per product (with FAQ markup). AI quotes this format often.
  • Tell AI who your brand is with an About page it can read (Organization schema).
  • Let the crawlers in & tell Bing: unblock AI crawlers, submit your sitemap, add an llms.txt map.
  • Earn a few real outside mentions: reviews, a roundup, a community post. Corroboration builds trust.
Tier 3 · ongoing

The infrastructure, where Herald will do the work

continuous
  • A dedicated, machine-readable page for every product.
  • Coverage across discovery, comparison & purchase questions.
  • Prices and stock kept in sync automatically.
  • Tracking every AI referral, so you see what's landing.
  • Data an AI shopping agent can act on (Herald's AUX layer).
Where Herald comes inYou can do Tiers 1 and 2 yourself. Herald is designed to run Tier 3 for you, along with the first two, and to publish it all and keep it fresh. Join early access →
Where you'll stand

The free half gets you most of the way

The good news is that the free DIY tiers cover most of what makes you readable. The infrastructure tier is the last stretch. It's hard to sustain by hand, which is why a store that "did the basics" can still plateau.

A store's readiness, roughly
AI-readyAll three tiers
The free DIY half (titles, facts, use-case, schema, mentions) does most of the heavy lifting.
The infrastructure half (per-product pages, sync, coverage, tracking) is the last stretch, which Herald is being built to do for you.
Illustrative only, since the split varies by store. Run your own to see the real number.
Do the free half and you'll feel the difference. Close the last stretch and you're fully AI-ready.
Keep reading

Where to go next

Guide 02
Why doesn't AI recommend my shop?
Guide 01 · the pillar
What is AEO? The whole picture

Rather skip the checklist?

Herald is in early access. Tell us about your store and we'll be in touch.

Join early access →