GoCardless: the 360 agent-readiness check
GoCardless scores 47 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, read 9 November 2026. Of the five surfaces an agent acts on, Ora found 2: a public API, a command line. The lowest score of the sixty, six points of it a search for the word cardless.
On 9 November 2026 the public site at gocardless.com scored 47 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, in Ora's Payments & Fintech category. Ora probes a site the way an agent would: it requests pages with the agents' own user agents, reads robots.txt, looks for the files agents read, and tries the API, MCP and payment surfaces. This check reads the act layer first, because that is what the directory records, then the door, what an agent can read, and whether the company is found and recommended. Ora's one-line summary: GoCardless offers SDKs for developers, but lacks an OpenAPI specification.
The score
| Layer | Asks | Points | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usability | Can agents use it | 26 of 54 | 48% |
| Access | Can agents read it | 34 of 64 | 53% |
| Discovery | Can agents find and recommend it | 8 of 22 | 36% |
| Payments | Can agents pay | 0 of 0 | none apply |
| Total | Grade D | 47 of 100 | 47% |
What an agent can do
The surfaces an agent acts on: an API it can find and call, an MCP server, an agent card, OAuth metadata, a command line. This is the layer the directory records, so it comes first. 2 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.
In the directory, GoCardless sign-in required, tools not seen, not counted; the connector run of 4 November 2026 is on the entry page. Ora's MCP server check for the same domain reads fail; the two look for different things, the directory for a server that answers a handshake and lists tools, Ora for a server it can find from the site.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCP server / manifest mcp-server | Fail | 0 of 6 | No MCP server or manifest found |
| MCP well-known discovery mcp-well-known-discovery | Pass | 2 of 2 | MCP server referenced in llms.txt |
| Public API with reachable endpoints public-api | Pass | 7 of 7 | REST API documentation found at https://docs.gocardless.com/docs/getting-started. Best-of-protocols score: 7/7. |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage public-api-docs | Pass | 3 of 3 | Documentation site found at https://docs.gocardless.com |
| Developer portal developer-portal | Pass | 6 of 6 | Developer portal found at /developers |
| OpenAPI spec published openapi-spec | Fail | 0 of 7 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) api-catalog-rfc9727 | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) |
| A2A / agent-card a2a-agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Agent discovery file agent-discovery-file | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent discovery file found |
| OAuth 2.0 support oauth-support | Partial | 3 of 5 | OAuth mentioned in documentation at https://docs.gocardless.com but no OAuth or OpenID Connect endpoint responded |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) oauth-protected-resource | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| auth.md exists auth-md-exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| WebMCP support webmcp | Fail | 0 of 2 | No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint nlweb-ask | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NLWeb-conformant /ask endpoint found via GET or POST |
| CLI tool available cli-tool | Pass | 3 of 3 | CLI tool found on PyPI: gocardless |
| Multi-language SDK packages rest-sdk-packages | Pass | 3 of 3 | SDK packages found across 3 ecosystems: npm, pypi, rubygems |
| JSON error responses json-error-responses | Fail | 0 of 4 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |
At the door
What the site answers when a request arrives with an agent's user agent, and what robots.txt says to agents. One check in this group does not apply to this site and is left out.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent crawler reachability agent-crawler-reachability | Fail | 0 of 2 | No major AI crawler can reach the homepage - ChatGPT-User: unknown, ClaudeBot: unknown, Google-Extended: unknown, ora-agent: unknown, DeepSeekBot: unknown |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy robots-ai-policy-quality | Fail | 0 of 2 | No AI crawler directives in robots.txt |
| robots.txt agent-user policy robots-agent-user-policy | Pass | 2 of 2 | No robots.txt restriction on user-triggered agents - they can read the site |
| Content behind auth docs-auth-gate | Pass | 2 of 2 | All 5 sampled pages are publicly readable (5 with substantive content) |
| Redirect hygiene redirect-hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| Web Bot Auth directory web-bot-auth-directory | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory found |
What an agent can read
Whether the text is in the first response, what the site publishes for agents, and how it describes itself to them.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content without JavaScript content-no-js | Pass | 2 of 3 | 7637 chars with H1 but flat heading structure |
| Page token budget page-token-budget | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 6 measured pages fit an agent context budget (largest ~3K tokens) |
| Sitemap exists sitemap | Pass | 2 of 2 | Valid sitemap found at https://gocardless.com/sitemap-index.xml with multiple sitemaps entries |
| Sitemap freshness (lastmod) sitemap-lastmod | Fail | 0 of 1 | None of the 500 sampled sitemap entries carries a lastmod date. Add <lastmod> (W3C datetime) so agents can prioritize fresh content. |
| llms.txt exists llms-txt-exists | Pass | 1 of 1 | Found the llms.txt at https://docs.gocardless.com/llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting llms-txt-formatting | Pass | 2 of 2 | The llms.txt is well-formatted: 136 lines with markdown links, 20,693 characters in total. |
| llms.txt links resolve llms-txt-links-resolve | Pass | 2 of 2 | no detail published |
| Markdown agent docs markdown-negotiation | Pass | 1 of 1 | Returns markdown when requested via Accept header |
| Markdown URL fallback markdown-url-fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://gocardless.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Bot-UA markdown serving agent-ua-markdown | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, ora-agent, DeepSeekBot) receives markdown when requesting HTML. |
| Agent mode view agent-mode-view | Fail | 0 of 2 | ?mode=agent returns same content as homepage (no dedicated agent view) |
| JSON-LD structured data json-ld | Fail | 0 of 4 | No JSON-LD structured data found on homepage |
| Organization schema completeness org-schema-completeness | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD found - Organization schema missing |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) json-ld-entity-linking | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD found - no entity linking possible |
| Schema type breadth schema-type-breadth | Fail | 0 of 2 | No extended schema types found - AI can only answer basic questions about this entity |
| Metadata completeness metadata-completeness | Pass | 2 of 2 | All metadata signals present: canonical URL, lang="en-GB", og:image, og:type |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use agent-instruction | Fail | 0 of 3 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |
Found and recommended
Whether an assistant can find the company by name, confirm what it is, and see it in the registries agents read.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand name discoverability brand-search-accuracy | Pass | 3 of 3 | gocardless.com appears at position #3 in a clean brand-name search for "GoCardless payments fintech" (4 total matches) |
| Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presence wikipedia-presence | Pass | 4 of 4 | Wikipedia "GoCardless" and Wikidata Q111418549 both verified - domain confirmed on both sources |
| Developer resource discoverability agentic-search-specific | Fail | 0 of 6 | Agent searched for "cardless" developer resources but found nothing relevant |
| Listed in MCP registries mcp-registry-listed | Fail | 0 of 1 | No bi-directionally verified MCP registry entry found. To pass, either publish the server under your own domain/npm scope, get a verified Smithery listing with non-zero usage, or link the registry entry from your homepage or docs. |
| NPM/PyPI SDK package npm-sdk-package | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| ChatGPT app listed chatgpt-app-listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Registry branding registry-branding | Fail | 0 of 2 | No registry branding (name, icon, description) found |
| Listed on skills.sh skills-sh-listed | Fail | 0 of 1 | No official skills self-published on skills.sh (21 community skills with potential relation to this domain found, but only self-published official skills count) |
| ARD discovery ard-catalog | Fail | 0 of 3 | No /.well-known/ai-catalog.json |
Payments
The agent payment protocols Ora probes for. A site that sells nothing has nothing here, and Ora scores the layer out of zero when none applies. None of the 6 payment checks applied to gocardless.com.
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 GoCardless, with what Ora observed. The wording of each fix is Ora's; the 28 checks it runs on an MCP server are listed with their layer and tier.
- Developer resource discoverability: fail, 0 of 6, about 6.1 points to gain. Ora saw: Agent searched for "cardless" developer resources but found nothing relevant
- MCP server / manifest: fail, 0 of 6, about 4.9 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP server or manifest found
- OpenAPI spec published: fail, 0 of 7, about 3.6 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found
- JSON error responses: fail, 0 of 4, about 3.3 points to gain. Ora saw: API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected)
- ARD discovery: fail, 0 of 3, about 3 points to gain. Ora saw: No /.well-known/ai-catalog.json
Our read
GoCardless scores 47, the lowest in this directory's first sixty, and more than 6 of the missing points are a search Ora ran for the word cardless, which found nothing relevant and says more about the probe than the company. The act layer accounts for the rest: no MCP server or manifest at any URL Ora could discover, though llms.txt refers to one, no OpenAPI specification, OAuth described in the documentation with no endpoint answering, endpoints that do not answer errors as JSON and no AI catalog. The surfaces that count are the REST documentation at docs.gocardless.com with an llms.txt beside it, a gocardless CLI on PyPI, SDKs in npm, PyPI and rubygems, and markdown returned on request. The bot detection probe could not be run, so the door is unverified, and the home page carries no JSON-LD. For a direct debit network, an MCP server at the address its own llms.txt names would be the first fix.
Test your own surfaces
The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at ora.ai and read the same four layers for your own site. For an MCP server, Ora scans the server URL itself and runs 28 of its 132 public checks on it, which is why it is the check this directory recommends; the reasons, the limits and the alternatives are on their own 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.
npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70All 360 checks, one company a day. Corrections to the corrections page.