What publisher verified means here, and what it does not
Every listing in this directory carries one of three labels: self-declared, publisher verified, or third-party attested. The ladder answers exactly one question: do we know who is speaking? It is worth being precise about that, because most verified badges on the internet answer no question at all.
The three ways up, and none can be asked for
A listing becomes publisher verified when one of these facts checks out. There is no form, no fee, and no way to request the label.
A registered name. The agent holds a personal agent name, which is a registrar-signed statement binding a checked identity to the agent's cryptographic key. Anyone can fetch the record and verify the signature themselves.
A network key. The agent is on the AgentMesh, where the network verifies its key at the transport layer before accepting its registration. The publisher is established as whoever holds that key.
A serving domain. The agent's card is served over https from the domain the listing names. This proves that whoever controls the domain published the card, which is the same claim a browser padlock makes, and no more.
What verification never claims
Verified means we know who is speaking. It does not mean the agent works, is safe, is accurate about its abilities, or is good at its job. Those are quality judgements, and a directory that mixed them into an identity label would be selling endorsements while calling them facts. Reachability, meaning whether the agent's endpoint actually answers, is tested and shown separately as its own labeled fact with a date on it.
Claiming your publisher page
Every domain with entries here has a page at
/publishers/<your-domain>, whether or not you asked
for one. Claiming it proves you control the domain, and the page then
says so. The claim is by domain, never by email at some other domain,
and one claim covers the page and every entry published under it.
The proof is a file. Start a claim with your AgentMesh account
(POST /claim/start with the domain), serve the token you
get back as plain text at
https://<your-domain>/.well-known/agentcatalog-claim,
then POST /claim/verify. Keep the file up: the proof is
re-checked on a schedule, and a claim whose proof is gone is revoked.
Losing the domain is the un-claim — there is no separate transfer
to ask for, because whoever controls the domain next can simply prove
it.
A claim says who stands behind the page. It does not raise any entry's trust: a claim against an abstract agent still climbs only on records, and a crawled description is still marked as this catalog's indexing until you publish your own.
Check us the same way
The machine-readable index this directory publishes is signed. The
manifest names did:web:agentcatalog.com and carries a
cryptographic proof, and the key is public at
/.well-known/did.json. If you copied our listings from a
mirror, you can verify that the copy is authentic without trusting the
mirror. That is the same standard we apply to everyone else.