AI-First Web — HTML for the AI era
Welcome to first.ai — an open, living guide for building websites that are readable and understandable by AI systems.
About
The way people discover information online is changing. More and more users now ask AI assistants — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot — instead of searching and clicking through traditional websites.
This shift means that, just as we once optimized for search engines (SEO), we now need to design content that AI systems can understand, index, and cite.
AI-first web design focuses on semantic clarity, structured data, and factual precision — so that your website isn’t just visible in a browser, but also readable and quotable by AI assistants
Sections
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| AI-first principles | What it means and why it matters |
| HTML structure for AI | Clear hierarchy, minimal JS |
| Meaningful content | Writing clear, factual, and citable text |
| Metadata (JSON-LD) | Practical patterns for articles, products, people |
| Language & accessibility | Multilingual and ARIA-friendly markup |
| Images & captions | Writing meaningful alt and figcaption |
| Forms & interaction | How to make inputs understandable for AI |
| robots.txt & AI ethics | Granting access to AI crawlers responsibly |
| GDPR & future regulation | Privacy and compliance in AI-era web |
Why This Matters
The majority of user queries are shifting from search engines to AI assistants.
Visual design is becoming secondary — content quality and structure are becoming the new priority.
If you want your content to be visible, cited, and understood by AI, it needs to be:
- technically accessible,
- semantically clear,
- and ethically open.
Examples
Explore working examples in the /examples folder:
How to Contribute
This guide evolves continuously. Contributions are welcome!
- Read the docs.
- Propose an improvement via a Pull Request or open a Discussion.
- Follow the principles of clarity, openness, and minimalism.
“Every example, pattern, or real-world test helps define the future AI-readable web. The next users of your website won’t be people — they’ll be AI.”