---
title: "Zalando: the 360 agent-readiness check | Agent Ready Checkout"
description: "Zalando on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-14: 40 of 100, grade D. The pay layer did not apply. One company a day."
canonical: https://agentreadycheckout.com/blog/zalando-agent-readiness
site: "Agent Ready Checkout"
last_updated: 2026-11-14
date: 2026-11-09
section: "360 checks"
---

# Zalando: the 360 agent-readiness check | Agent Ready Checkout

> Zalando on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-14: 40 of 100, grade D. The pay layer did not apply. One company a day.

Source: https://agentreadycheckout.com/blog/zalando-agent-readiness
Site: Agent Ready Checkout
Last reviewed: 2026-11-14

360 check, 9 Nov 2026

# Zalando on the pay layer: the 360 agent-readiness check

In short

Zalando scores 40 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, read 14 Nov 2026. The six payment checks did not apply to zalando.com on this read, which is how Ora treats a site it does not read as a shop. 17 checks pass, 14 are partial and 46 fail. A robots.txt and an llms.txt that are both HTML pages.

On 14 Nov 2026 the public site at zalando.com scored **40 of 100** on [Ora's](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycheckout.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) agent-readiness scan, a D, in Ora's E-commerce category. Zalando is Europe's largest online fashion platform, selling in 25 markets, 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.

## The score

| Layer | Points | Share | What the layer asks |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery | 7.5 of 11 | 68% | Can agents find and recommend it |
| Access | 16.17 of 41 | 39% | Can agents read it |
| Usability | 19.5 of 72 | 27% | Can agents use it |
| Payments | 0 of 0 | none apply | Can agents pay |
|  |
| Total | 40 of 100 | 40% | Grade D |

## The pay layer

Ora did not run the six payment checks against zalando.com 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 marketplace 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.

| Payment check | Result | Points | Matrix row | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| x402 | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | x402 in the matrix | No x402 payment protocol support detected. No commerce signals detected - agent-payment protocols are optional for non-commerce sites |
| MPP | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | MPP in the matrix | No MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) support detected. No commerce signals detected - agent-payment protocols are optional for non-commerce sites |
| UCP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | UCP in the matrix | no UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No commerce signals detected - agent-payment protocols are optional for non-commerce sites |
| ACP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | ACP in the matrix | no ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No commerce signals detected - agent-payment protocols are optional for non-commerce sites |

## The other layers, check by check

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

### Discovery: 7.5 of 11

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ARD discovery | Partial | 0 of 1 | /.well-known/ard.json exists but is not valid JSON |
| AI Catalog discovery | Partial | 0 of 1 | /.well-known/ai-catalog.json exists but is not valid JSON |
| Developer resource discoverability | Pass | 4 of 4 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Brand name discoverability | Partial | 1 of 3 | zalando.com ranks #9 for "Zalando" (searched your brand name alone: no main product term from your homepage qualified) |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy | Partial | 0.5 of 1 | robots.txt answered an HTML page instead of rules. Crawlers find no rules in it and read the whole site, so your AI crawler policy is not stated. Serve a plain-text robots.txt |
| NPM/PyPI SDK package | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Agent platform configs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Could 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 manifest | Fail | 0 of 1 | No Agent Plugins manifest (plugin.json) found in discovered repos |
| ChatGPT app listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Homepage not hidden from search | Pass | 1 of 1 | No noindex on the homepage: no robots, googlebot or bingbot meta tag and no X-Robots-Tag header hides it from search. |

### Access: 16.17 of 41

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Sitemap exists | Fail | 0 of 1 | No sitemap found |
| Content without JavaScript | Partial | 1.67 of 5 | Homepage: Only 333 chars of text content - agents see limited content. No inner pages checked: the scan found none to sample. |
| Not blocked by bot detection | Pass | 2 of 2 | Site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). |
| Agent discovery file | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent discovery file found |
| A2A / agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Listed on skills.sh | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| pricing.md exists | Partial | 1 of 2 | pricing.md found at /pricing.md (384 lines), but it does not open with a # heading - start it with a # title so agents read it as markdown |
| NLWeb Schema Feeds | Fail | 0 of 1 | No schemamap: directive in robots.txt |
| MCP well-known discovery | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server URL discovered |
| HTTP Link headers (RFC 8288) | Fail | 0 of 1 | No HTTP Link response headers (RFC 8288) found |
| Markdown URL fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://zalando.com/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 area | Fail | 0 of 1 | No section-level llms.txt found. Tried /docs/llms.txt, /api/llms.txt, /developers/llms.txt, /guides/llms.txt, /reference/llms.txt. This is a bonus check: it can add a point and never costs one. |
| llms.txt exists | Partial | 0 of 1 | A file is present at https://docs.zalando.com/llms.txt, but it returns an HTML page rather than a plain-text llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting | Fail | 0 of 2 | No llms.txt found to evaluate quality |
| JSON-LD structured data | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD structured data found on homepage |
| Pricing info accessible | Fail | 0 of 3 | No pricing page or pricing data found |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage | Pass | 4 of 4 | Documentation site found at https://docs.zalando.com |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use | Fail | 0 of 1 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |
| Skills.sh skill quality | Partial | 0 of 2 | Minimal skills.sh presence - 1 skill, 1 installs. Too thin for agents to understand capabilities |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Fail | 0 of 1 | No JSON-LD found - no entity linking possible |
| Metadata completeness | Partial | 0.5 of 1 | Only 1/4 metadata signals present - missing: canonical URL, og:image, og:type |
| Organization schema completeness | Fail | 0 of 1 | No JSON-LD found - Organization schema missing |
| Trust anchor pages | Fail | 0 of 1 | No trust anchor pages found with sufficient content (About, Contact, Privacy) |
| Markdown alternate link | Fail | 0 of 1 | No 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 hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Page token budget | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 1 measured page fit an agent context budget (largest ~1K tokens) |
| OpenAPI spec published | Fail | 0 of 8 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| Developer portal | Pass | 5 of 5 | Developer documentation portal found at https://docs.zalando.com |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) | Partial | 1 of 2 | api-catalog responded but body is not valid JSON |
| Markdown agent docs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Missing 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) | Fail | 0 of 1 | Homepage https://zalando.com does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html; Vary header missing Accept (got "none") |
| Bot-UA markdown serving | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) receives markdown when requesting HTML. Optional: detect AI-bot UAs server-side and serve them a markdown representation directly. |
| Agent crawler reachability | Pass | 1 of 1 | Reachable to every agent we tested - ChatGPT-User: reachable, OAI-SearchBot: reachable, Claude-User: reachable, PerplexityBot: reachable |

### Usability: 19.5 of 72

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Public API with reachable endpoints | Pass | 8 of 8 | Documentation site found at https://docs.zalando.com but API content unclear. GraphQL endpoint at https://api.zalando.com/graphql is reachable; introspection requires authentication (API key / OAuth) |
| OAuth 2.0 support | Pass | 5 of 5 | OpenID Connect discovery endpoint found at https://identity.zalando.com |
| Scoped permissions | Fail | 0 of 5 | No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found |
| Agent onboarding friction | Partial | 1 of 2 | Onboarding signals described but not verified live: free tier available |
| Web Bot Auth directory | Partial | 1 of 2 | Web Bot Auth directory found but body is not valid JSON |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| auth.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | Path https://zalando.com/auth.md returned HTML (SPA / 404 fallback), not an auth.md document |
| auth.md structure | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| Agent auth discovery metadata | Fail | 0 of 3 | Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: zalando.com, api.zalando.com. |
| Agent auth WWW-Authenticate hint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=... found. Probed [https://zalando.com/api, https://zalando.com/api/v1, https://zalando.com/v1, https://zalando.com/v2, https://zalando.com/agent/identity |
| agent_auth endpoints reachable | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent_auth endpoint URIs found in AS metadata or /auth.md prose; nothing to probe |
| MCP server / manifest | Fail | 0 of 10 | No MCP server or manifest found |
| WebMCP support | Fail | 0 of 8 | No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found |
| Rate limit response headers | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no header convention documented on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| Idempotency-Key support | Fail | 0 of 3 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no idempotency documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| JSON error responses | Fail | 0 of 3 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |
| CLI tool available | Pass | 3 of 3 | CLI tool found on PyPI: zalando |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint | Pass | 1 of 1 | NLWeb /ask endpoint exists but requires authentication (HTTP 403, via POST) |
| NLWeb streaming support | Fail | 0 of 1 | NLWeb /ask requires authentication - cannot verify streaming |
| MCP server-card.json | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server card found (checked /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json, the site's ai-catalog.json, servers[].card in mcp.json, and <server>/server-card) |
| Product + docs MCP coverage | Fail | 0 of 2 | This 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 environment | Fail | 0 of 2 | No sandbox or test environment found |
| GraphQL typed error model | Fail | 0 of 3 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no typed graphql error model documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL versioning / deprecation policy | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql versioning / deprecation policy documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL pagination pattern | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql pagination pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| GraphQL async-job pattern | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no graphql async-job pattern documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| Agent-friendly 404s | Fail | 0 of 2 | Fail, no detail recorded. |
| Native interactive controls | Pass | 3 of 3 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Accessible names on controls | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Accessibility-tree injection safety (bonus) | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| MCP Apps support | Fail | 0 of 4 | No 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 support | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2UI or generative UI support detected |
| API schema complexity analysis | Partial | 1.5 of 2 | REST: OpenAPI spec found but failed to parse for complexity analysis \| GraphQL: schema details documented at https://developers.merchants.zalando.com/docs/openapi/orders.html (introspection auth-gated) \| Combined score: 1.5/2 |
| Function calling compatibility | Partial | 1 of 2 | API spec found but couldn't validate function calling compatibility |

## 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 Zalando.

OpenAPI spec published

Fail, 0 of 8, about 6.5 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found.

MCP server / manifest

Fail, 0 of 10, about 6.2 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP server or manifest found.

WebMCP support

Fail, 0 of 8, about 4.9 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found.

Brand name discoverability

Partial, 1 of 3, about 4 points to gain. Ora saw: zalando.com ranks #9 for "Zalando" (searched your brand name alone: no main product term from your homepage qualified).

Scoped permissions

Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.1 points to gain. Ora saw: No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found.

## Our read

Zalando's robots.txt answers with an HTML page instead of rules, so crawlers read the whole site by default and the policy row cannot be met; the llms.txt at docs.zalando.com/.well-known/llms.txt is an HTML page too. The door itself is open to all four agent user agents, and that is where the good news on the reading side ends: 333 characters of home page, no inner page the scan could sample, no sitemap and no JSON-LD. Ora found no commerce signals on the page it could read, so the six payment checks did not apply on this read, which for Europe's largest online fashion platform is the template talking rather than the shop. The act layer is the strongest of the fashion sellers here, with OpenID Connect discovery at identity.zalando.com, a documentation portal at docs.zalando.com and an SDK in a registry, though Ora found no OpenAPI specification, no MCP server and no declared scopes. Two files served as the right content type would move this C on their own.

## Test your own checkout

The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at [ora.ai](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycheckout.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) and read the same layers for your own site, with the six payment checks mapped to this matrix on [the Ora Payments page](https://agentreadycheckout.com/method/ora-payments-layer). 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](https://agentreadycheckout.com/guides/best-ai-readiness-tools-2026).

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

[All 360 checks](https://agentreadycheckout.com/blog), one company a day. Corrections to [the corrections page](https://agentreadycheckout.com/corrections).

## Sources

1.  [ora.ai/api/score/zalando.com, Ora's scan (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/score/zalando.com?utm_source=agentreadycheckout.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check), read 14 Nov 2026
2.  [Ora's scoring rules, version 3 (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/ranker/releases/3/rules?utm_source=agentreadycheckout.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check), read 14 Nov 2026
3.  [Ora check catalog (GET /api/checks)](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadycheckout.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check), read 14 Nov 2026
4.  [zalando.com, the company's site](https://zalando.com/), read 14 Nov 2026

Last reviewed 14 Nov 2026

## Edition

Matrix edition of 4 Nov 2026.

Reviewed 14 Nov 2026, [4 sources](#sources-h).

## Method

Every number on this page is read from Ora's score file for the domain on the date shown. The verdict is ours.

[Methodology](https://agentreadycheckout.com/method)