Answer Source Protocol

A brand's canonical, structured, signed, freshness-stamped source of truth — the machine-native surface AI engines and agents should read instead of scraping HTML.

Why it exists

AI assistants and shopping agents answer questions about your brand by scraping human-oriented web pages. That's why they hallucinate your prices, return policies and product claims. ASP gives engines and agents one clean, verifiable, always-fresh document to read — so they get your brand right, and cite you as the trusted source.

The document

A single JSON file, served at a stable URL, signed by its publisher and stamped with a freshness window. Minimum: asp_version, generated_at, brand.name, and some content (identity.summary, facts, or faqs).

{
  "asp_version": "0.1",
  "generated_at": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "ttl_seconds": 86400,
  "publisher": "GEOpta",
  "brand": {
    "name": "Acme",
    "url": "https://acme.com",
    "aliases": [
      "Acme Inc"
    ],
    "niche": "CRM software"
  },
  "identity": {
    "summary": "Acme is a CRM for small teams.",
    "disambiguation": "Acme is the official CRM at acme.com; distinct from similarly-named brands."
  },
  "facts": [
    "Founded 2019.",
    "Plans start at $19/user/month.",
    "Free 14-day trial, no card required."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "question": "Does Acme integrate with Slack?",
      "answer": "Yes, Acme has a native Slack integration."
    }
  ],
  "products": [],
  "policies": {},
  "sources": {
    "llms_txt": "/cdn/TOKEN/llms.txt",
    "schema": "/cdn/TOKEN/schema.json"
  },
  "signature": {
    "alg": "HMAC-SHA256",
    "key_id": "…",
    "verify_url": "https://geopta.com/api/asp/verify",
    "value": "…"
  }
}

Signing & verification

Each document is signed (HMAC-SHA256 over its canonical form). Anyone can verify authenticity and integrity by POSTing the document to the publisher's verify_url. A verified document is a trust mark: proof the facts are published by the brand's authorized source, unaltered.

Serving it

Make the document discoverable three ways, all of which GEOpta sets up for you on deploy: (1) a well-known path on your domain — /.well-known/answer-source.json — that AI crawlers can probe; (2) a <link rel="answer-source" type="application/json"> tag in your page <head>; and (3) a line in your llms.txt. GEOpta hosts and signs the document at /cdn/<token>/asp.json, lists it in the public Brand Registry, and keeps it fresh automatically.

Free validator

Paste an ASP document (or a URL to one) to validate it against the spec and check its signature.

Answer Source Protocol is an open specification stewarded by GEOpta (Dribble Software Private Limited). Free to implement. geopta.com