well-known

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Well-known refers to designating a common URL on domains for data to be located typically automatically by some software (like a browser or a search engine), and is generally an antipattern to be avoided, because it breaks the portability of content across directories and systems; see follow your nose instead.

"Well-known" are prescribed URLs/paths, whereas there are also emergent common page URLs published by IndieWeb sites like about, contact, etc. See:

page

There are a couple of common patterns or categories of "well-known" URLs:

a root level file
stuff inside a root level "/.well-known/" directory, standardized by https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615

Root Level

emergent pages

Main article: page#Examples

There are a small handful of emergent root level pages that some community members have published:

about, contact, pay, now

See those individual pages for specific IndieWeb Examples etc.

There is also a search engine that is indexing specifically a few of these pages:

https://aboutideasnow.com/about — indexes /about /now /ideas

See pages for more.

historical for browsers and bots

Historically there are several root level paths that are used by browser and search engines, and it's unlikely that we’ll ever be rid of them:

robots.txt
favicon.ico

something.txt

There has been a disturbing pattern of new proposals in form of something.txt over the years, and in short, they're pretty much all bad ideas. (if this list gets too big, create a separate page)

ai.txt

Announced 2023-05-30 and used by their own API to "communicate the permissions set by ai.txt files to our growing network of AI researchers and partners, including Hugging Face and Stability AI." 2023-05-30 Cullen Miller: ai.txt: A new way for websites to set permissions for AI (archived) and on Twitter
Their site fails to implement it themselves, https://site.spawning.ai/ai.txt returns a 404

ads.txt

Reference: Wikipedia:Ads.txt

Criticism: 2019-05-10 Dr. Augustine Fou: How Ads.txt is Being Exploited by "Baddies" for Fun and Profit (archived)

humans.txt

gRegor Morrill: Criticism: I set up one of these years ago then forgot about it. It was last updated 2011-05-08 and I rediscovered it 2023-05-25, demonstrating the sidefile-antipattern. I finally removed and redirected https://gregorlove.com/humans.txt to my about page.

indieweb.txt

indieweb.txt A file proposed to show off the IndieWeb tactics employed by sites that has seen little use since its inception.

trust.txt

2020 trust.txt
- https://journallist.net/reference-document-for-trust-txt-specifications
2025-03-17 proposed at IETF Bangkok secdispatch session
- Notes: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-122-secdispatch-202503170230/ (with lots of criticism and pushback)

API endpoints

Apparently these root files are a convention on some sites:

/code.json
/data.json
/sellers.json

Per:

https://twitter.com/mistersql/status/1528833918245511171 (also yet another mislabeling of 'microformats' for something they are not)
- "did you know many gov't sites have a code.json or data.json at the root of their domain to let you discover the opensource and open data they have available?
  
  https://www.dol.gov/code.json
  https://www.dol.gov/data.json
  
  I haven't found if there are any more of these microformats" @mistersql May 23, 2022

inside a root well-known directory

Main article: .well-known