Making a Website That Works for Humans and AI

Most websites are made for people.

They use images, animations, menus, videos and carefully designed layouts to help visitors understand what a company or product is about.

But increasingly, people are not the only visitors.

AI systems also search the web, read articles and collect information to answer questions. That made us wonder:

What would a website look like if we deliberately designed it for both humans and AI?

That is one of the ideas we are experimenting with on the new Exodus-Protocol website.

Humans and AI don't need the same presentation

For a person, visuals are incredibly useful.

If you visit the Exodus-Protocol website, we want you to see the galaxy, ships, planets, development progress, screenshots and videos. The experience should help communicate what the game feels like.

An AI does not need most of that.

It benefits much more from clear text with a logical structure. It wants to quickly understand things such as:

• What is Exodus-Protocol?
• What makes it different?
• How does the game work?
• What is already working?
• What are we still developing?
• Who is building it?
• What changed in the latest release?

Fancy animations don't make those questions easier to answer.

Clear information does.

Our solution: Human Mode and AI Mode

Instead of choosing between the two, we want to provide both.

Human Mode is the normal Exodus-Protocol website.

It contains the visual experience: the live galaxy, imagery, videos, interactive components and the overall design.

AI Mode presents the same information as clean Markdown.

Markdown is basically plain text with simple structure. A heading might look like this:

## How the AI Commander Works

and a list might look like this:

- Understands the current state of your empire
- Gives strategic advice
- Can perform actions for you

There is very little decoration, which makes the information easy for both people and machines to read.

The important part is that we are not writing two different websites.

Both versions come from the same content.

If we update an article, release note or explanation, the Human and AI versions update together.

AI doesn't have to press the AI button

The AI Mode button is mostly there so people can see the alternative version themselves.

AI systems don't actually need to visit the site and click it.

We can also make the Markdown versions available directly.

For example, an article could exist as:

/journal/building-a-living-galaxy

while its simple Markdown version is available as:

/journal/building-a-living-galaxy.md

We also plan to provide one larger Markdown document explaining the entire Exodus-Protocol project.

Think of it as the written manual to the public website.

Giving AI a map

Another interesting idea we discovered during our research is a file called llms.txt.

It acts a little like a map for AI systems.

Instead of containing the entire website, it can simply say:

This is Exodus-Protocol.
Start here if you want to understand the project.
Read this page for the game.
Read this page for our AI approach.
Read these pages for development updates.

OpenAI and Anthropic already use similar Markdown-based approaches for parts of their own documentation.

It is still an emerging idea rather than a universal internet standard, but it is simple enough that there is little downside to supporting it.

The normal website still matters

One thing became very clear during our research: creating an AI-friendly version does not mean the normal website becomes less important.

Search engines and AI search systems still depend heavily on normal web pages that are easy to understand.

That means we still need:

• clear headings;
• meaningful text;
• sensible links;
• permanent URLs for articles;
• descriptions that explain what each page contains;
• information that exists as actual text instead of only inside an animation or image.

For example, if our galaxy shows that Exodus-Protocol currently contains thousands of solar systems, that number should also exist as text.

An AI should not have to understand a 3D galaxy visualization to discover it.

Interestingly, many of these improvements also make the website better for people using screen readers and other accessibility tools.

Why are we doing this?

Part of Exodus-Protocol is about experimenting with what changes when AI becomes part of both the game and the way we build it.

The website gives us another opportunity to explore that idea.

Today, almost every website assumes that a human is the visitor.

In the coming years, it seems increasingly likely that sometimes a person's AI assistant will visit first.

It might research a game.

Compare projects.

Find information for an investor.

Summarize an article.

Or answer someone's question about how Exodus-Protocol works.

If that becomes normal, websites may need to communicate with two audiences at the same time.

People should get the experience.

AI should get the information.

We are going to try to give both of them a first-class version of Exodus-Protocol.