# AB-016: JSON Format Support | AgentBadge

> Your site returns JSON when an agent requests it.

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 [Content Negotiation](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules#content_negotiation)
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 AB-016

 📊

AB-016

# JSON Format Support

 [🔄 Content Negotiation](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules#content_negotiation)

 Pillar: Discovery

 Moderate effort

 Severity: medium

 Est. cost: $10-50

 Gap: documentation

 Fix: deterministic

## What it means

Your site returns JSON when an agent requests it.

## Why it matters

JSON is the universal language for APIs. If agents can't get JSON, they can't use your data.

## Evidence expected

This rule is verified by:

 http

 Source: Runtime probe

 ✗

### What's wrong

Requesting JSON always returns HTML. Agents can't extract data.

 ✓

### What's right

Requesting JSON returns clean JSON data that agents can parse.

## Check this rule on your site

Enter your URL to check just this one rule (AB-001).

 Check rule

## Related rules in Content Negotiation

 [🤖
 Agent User-Agent Format](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-015)
 [📝
 Plain Text Format Support](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-017)
 [⬇️
 Markdown Format Support](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-018)
 [🎯
 Preferred Format Selection](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-019)
 [🔀
 Vary Header](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-028)

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## Machine-Readable

 This rule is also available as JSON:
 [/rules/AB-016.json](https://agentbadge.xyz/rules/AB-016.json)

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