W3C proposes a nine point declaration on the web and AI agents

On October 21, 2026, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published a discussion paper on the web in the AI era. W3C writes web rules. It proposes a nine point declaration on the value of the web and a new Agentic Web Working Group. It also lists work items for more than a dozen W3C groups. The paper is not a standard.

What the paper covers

The paper looks at crawling, consent, payments, identity and accessibility when software browses for a person. It says that the deal with search engines, let software crawl content and send visitors, has no equal for AI systems. W3C will show the paper on October 29.

The numbers

All figures come from vendors, not from W3C. The paper says that they are not directly comparable.

• Cloudflare: daily AI agent calls increased by more than 1,700% in the year to September 2026.
• HUMAN Security: 79% of agent visits landed on product and search pages, and 2.3% on checkout and payment.
• DataDome: AI training was 52% of crawler calls in June 2026.

What is not known

The paper is the view of the Strategy Team, not of the W3C Membership. It sets no closing date for comments. It says that AI helped to write it, and that its human editor takes full responsibility.

Insight: Rule makers race to set the rules for agents

HUMAN Security finds that only 2.3% of agent visits go to checkout. At the same time, the US government plans to let agents renew passports before the end of 2026. The U.K. Information Commission asked for information on agentic AI on 8 October. This reads as a race to set the rules for agents before they buy at scale. Monitor the W3C session on October 29.