Agent Ready CheckoutEdition . The pay layer for agents.

360 check, 10 Nov 2026

Aldi on the pay layer: the 360 agent-readiness check

In short

Aldi scores 38 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, read 14 Nov 2026. The six payment checks did not apply to aldi.us on this read, which is how Ora treats a site it does not read as a shop. The grocer challenges six crawlers; the GraphQL endpoint behind them asks for a key.

On 14 Nov 2026 the public site at aldi.us scored 38 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D. Aldi is the German discount grocer's US arm, so this check reads the Payments layer first: the six checks that look for x402, MPP, UCP, ACP and AP2 on the domain, the same protocols this site's matrix tracks row by row. The other layers follow, with every check Ora ran and what it saw. Ora's one-line summary: ALDI.us offers OAuth 2.0 support, but lacks an OpenAPI specification.

The score

Aldi on Ora, read 14 Nov 2026: points per layer, with the share of each layer's maximum. 14 checks pass, 10 are partial, 54 fail and 47 do not apply to this site.
LayerPointsShareWhat the layer asks
Discovery6 of 1155%Can agents find and recommend it
Access10 of 4920%Can agents read it
Usability29 of 6843%Can agents use it
Payments0 of 0none applyCan agents pay
Total38 of 10038%Grade D

The pay layer

Ora did not run the six payment checks against aldi.us on this read: it marks them not applicable on a site it does not read as a shop, so the layer has no maximum and costs nothing. A retailer that sells online can still publish any of the five protocols; the matrix says which processors and platforms carry each one. Each protocol links to its matrix row, where the processors and platforms that carry it are dated and sourced.

The six Payments checks Ora runs, on aldi.us, read 14 Nov 2026. A protocol not found costs nothing, and a check marked does not apply was not run against the site.
Payment checkResultPointsMatrix rowWhat Ora saw
x402Does not apply0 of 2x402 in the matrixNo x402 payment protocol support detected
MPPDoes not apply0 of 2MPP in the matrixNo MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) support detected
UCPDoes not apply0 of 3UCP in the matrixno UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) signals detected
ACPDoes not apply0 of 3ACP in the matrixno ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) signals detected
ACP delegate paymentDoes not apply0 of 3ACP in the matrixNo ACP Delegate Payment signals detected
AP2Does not apply0 of 3AP2 in the matrixNo AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) signals detected

The other layers, check by check

Every check Ora ran on aldi.us, grouped by layer, with the result, the points and what Ora recorded where its wording passes this site's gate.

Discovery: 6 of 11

Discovery checks on aldi.us, read 14 Nov 2026; 7 more checks in this layer did not apply to the site.
CheckResultPointsWhat Ora saw
ARD discoveryFail0 of 1No /.well-known/ard.json (and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json)
Developer resource discoverabilityFail0 of 3Agent searched for "aldi" developer resources but found nothing relevant
Brand name discoverabilityPass3 of 3aldi.us appears at position #3 in a clean brand-name search for "ALDI Grocery Stores" (2 total matches)
Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presencePartial2 of 4Wikipedia "Aldi" verified - create a Wikidata item with P856 (official website) = aldi.us to complete knowledge graph coverage
robots.txt AI crawler policyPartial1 of 2Training: 0/2. Search: 1/3 page/crawler pairs permitted. robots.txt restricts 4/5 evaluated page/crawler pairs. Checked 5 training and search crawlers (gptbot, claudebot, oai-searchbot, claude-searchbot
Agent platform configsFail0 of 1Could not locate a public repo containing agent configs or rules. If our probes missed it, AI coding agents likely will too - link the repo from your homepage or docs so it's discoverable.
Agent Plugins manifestFail0 of 1No Agent Plugins manifest (plugin.json) found in discovered repos
Listed on skills.shFail0 of 1No official skills self-published on skills.sh (100 community skills with potential relation to this domain found, but only self-published official skills count)
ChatGPT app listedFail0 of 2Not found in ChatGPT app directory

Access: 10 of 49

Access checks on aldi.us, read 14 Nov 2026; 6 more checks in this layer did not apply to the site.
CheckResultPointsWhat Ora saw
Sitemap existsPass2 of 2Valid sitemap found at https://www.aldi.us/sitemaps/storefront_pro/www_aldi_us/sitemap.xml with multiple sitemaps entries
Content without JavaScriptPartial2 of 31395 chars with H1, but 1.6% content ratio is below the 5% target
Not blocked by bot detectionPartial0 of 2Bot management challenged GPTBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended. A challenge is an identity check that verified crawlers pass
Agent discovery fileFail0 of 2No agent discovery file found
A2A / agent-cardFail0 of 2No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json
pricing.md existsFail0 of 2No pricing.md found - agents need machine-readable pricing to compare products and make purchase recommendations
NLWeb Schema FeedsFail0 of 1No schemamap: directive in robots.txt
MCP well-known discoveryFail0 of 2No MCP server URL discovered
Agent mode viewPartial1 of 2Agent mode view found at ?mode=agent (3 signals: api, agent, integration)
HTTP Link headers (RFC 8288)Fail0 of 1No HTTP Link response headers (RFC 8288) found
Markdown URL fallbackFail0 of 2Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://aldi.us/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body).
Modular llms.txt per product areaFail0 of 1No section-level llms.txt files found (optional)
Sitemap freshness (lastmod)Pass1 of 1Pass, no detail recorded.
robots.txt agent-user policyPartial1 of 2robots.txt restricts 2/3 evaluated page/crawler pairs. Checked 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page. Restricted: claude-user at https://aldi.us/ (Disallow: /, line 549)
llms.txt existsFail0 of 1No llms.txt found at /llms.txt or /.well-known/llms.txt.
llms.txt formattingFail0 of 2No llms.txt found to evaluate quality
JSON-LD structured dataFail0 of 4No JSON-LD structured data found on homepage
Pricing info accessibleFail0 of 3No pricing page or pricing data found
Public API/docs linked from homepageFail0 of 3No public API or documentation page linked from homepage
Agent instruction / when-to-useFail0 of 3No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found
Skills.sh skill qualityFail0 of 2No official skills on skills.sh to evaluate
JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs)Fail0 of 2No JSON-LD found - no entity linking possible
Metadata completenessPartial1 of 22/4 metadata signals present - missing: og:image, og:type
Organization schema completenessFail0 of 2No JSON-LD found - Organization schema missing
Schema type breadthFail0 of 2No extended schema types found - AI can only answer basic questions about this entity
Trust anchor pagesPartial1 of 2About, Privacy pages verified - missing: Contact
Markdown alternate linkFail0 of 1No sampled page advertises a markdown alternate. Add <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="..."> (or the equivalent Link response header) pointing at a markdown twin of the page.
Redirect hygienePass1 of 1Pass, no detail recorded.
Page token budgetPass1 of 1All 1 measured page fit an agent context budget (largest ~1K tokens)
OpenAPI spec publishedFail0 of 7No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found
API catalog (RFC 9727)Fail0 of 2No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727)
Markdown agent docsFail0 of 1Missing markdown content negotiation. Homepage returned text/html when probed with Accept: text/markdown (expected text/markdown), and none of the well-known root paths (/llms.md, /auth.md, /agents.md, /developers.md
Markdown content negotiation (acceptmarkdown.com)Fail0 of 1Homepage https://aldi.us does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html; charset=utf-8; Vary header missing Accept (got "none")
Bot-UA markdown servingFail0 of 1No probed bot User-Agent (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, ora-agent, DeepSeekBot) receives markdown when requesting HTML.
Agent crawler reachabilityPartial0 of 2Bot management challenged ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended - a challenge is an identity check verified crawlers pass, so reachability is undetermined rather than blocked (ChatGPT-User: challenged

Usability: 29 of 68

Usability checks on aldi.us, read 14 Nov 2026; 28 more checks in this layer did not apply to the site.
CheckResultPointsWhat Ora saw
Public API with reachable endpointsPass7 of 7GraphQL endpoint at https://aldi.us/graphql is reachable; introspection requires authentication (API key / OAuth), which is expected for agent access. Best-of-protocols score: 7/7.
OAuth 2.0 supportPass5 of 5OAuth endpoint found at https://aldi.us/oauth/authorize
Scoped permissionsFail0 of 5No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found
Agent onboarding frictionPartial1 of 2Onboarding signals described but not verified live: self-serve key generation
Web Bot Auth directoryFail0 of 2No /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory found
OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728)Fail0 of 2No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728)
auth.md existsFail0 of 2No /auth.md found at site root
auth.md structureFail0 of 2No /auth.md found at site root
Agent auth discovery metadataFail0 of 3Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: aldi.us, api.aldi.us.
Agent auth WWW-Authenticate hintFail0 of 1No 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=... found. Probed [https://aldi.us/api, https://aldi.us/api/v1, https://aldi.us/v1, https://aldi.us/v2, https://aldi.us/agent/identity, https://aldi.us/agent/auth
agent_auth endpoints reachableFail0 of 2No agent_auth endpoint URIs found in AS metadata or /auth.md prose; nothing to probe
MCP server / manifestFail0 of 6No MCP server or manifest found
WebMCP supportFail0 of 5No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found
Rate limit response headersFail0 of 2GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no header convention documented on GraphQL-tagged pages
Idempotency-Key supportFail0 of 3GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no idempotency documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages
JSON error responsesPass4 of 4Pass, no detail recorded.
NLWeb /ask endpointPass1 of 1NLWeb /ask endpoint exists but requires authentication (HTTP 403, via POST)
NLWeb streaming supportFail0 of 1NLWeb /ask requires authentication - cannot verify streaming
MCP server-card.jsonFail0 of 2No MCP server card found at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json
Product + docs MCP coverageFail0 of 2This bonus needs two MCP servers: one for your product so agents can take actions, and a separate one for your documentation so agents can answer questions from your docs.
Sandbox / test environmentFail0 of 2No sandbox or test environment found
GraphQL typed error modelFail0 of 3GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no typed graphql error model documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages
GraphQL versioning / deprecation policyFail0 of 2GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql versioning / deprecation policy documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages
GraphQL pagination patternFail0 of 2GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql pagination pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages
GraphQL async-job patternFail0 of 2GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql async-job pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages
Accessible document structurePass3 of 3Pass, no detail recorded.
Native interactive controlsPass3 of 3Pass, no detail recorded.
Accessible names on controlsPass2 of 2Pass, no detail recorded.
Form control labelingPass2 of 2Pass, no detail recorded.
Accessibility-tree injection safety (bonus)Pass2 of 2Pass, no detail recorded.
MCP Apps supportFail0 of 4No MCP Apps support detected - this product has an in-agent UI surface but exposes no ui:// resources or tool UI metadata for agents to render.
A2UI / generative UI supportFail0 of 2No A2UI or generative UI support detected
API schema complexity analysisFail0 of 2GraphQL: introspection auth-gated and no schema evidence in docs
Function calling compatibilityFail0 of 2No API spec found - function calling requires discoverable endpoints

The fixes worth most points

Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for Aldi.

Developer resource discoverability
Fail, 0 of 3, about 6.1 points to gain. Ora saw: Agent searched for "aldi" developer resources but found nothing relevant.
OpenAPI spec published
Fail, 0 of 7, about 4.8 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found.
MCP server / manifest
Fail, 0 of 6, about 3.9 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP server or manifest found.
Scoped permissions
Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found.
WebMCP support
Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found.

Our read

Aldi's US site did not read as a shop to Ora: the six payment checks did not apply on this read, so the pay layer is 0 of 0. The door is the story. Bot management challenged GPTBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and Applebot-Extended, and robots.txt permits 1 of 3 search pairs, none of the training pairs, and restricts 2 of 3 pairs for the user-triggered agents. Behind it an agent reads 1,395 characters with an H1 at a 1.6 percent content ratio, a valid sitemap, 2 of 4 metadata signals and no JSON-LD; no content pages were sampled, so those rows are unverified rather than failed. The act layer is better than the door: a GraphQL endpoint at aldi.us/graphql asks for a key, OAuth lives at /oauth/authorize, and an NLWeb /ask endpoint sits behind a 403. A search for Aldi's developer resources found nothing, the fix worth most at about 6 points. A D at 38 that shuts the door on the agents who would read the shelves.

Test your own checkout

The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at ora.ai and read the same layers for your own site, with the six payment checks mapped to this matrix on the Ora Payments page. The command below runs the same audit from a terminal and exits with 1 under the score you set, so it can gate a deploy. Why Ora, and its limits.

npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70

All 360 checks, one company a day. Corrections to the corrections page.

Sources

  1. ora.ai/api/score/aldi.us, Ora's scan (vendor), read 14 Nov 2026
  2. Ora check catalog (GET /api/checks), read 14 Nov 2026
  3. aldi.us, the company's site, read 14 Nov 2026

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