The Web Flips to Agent-First Design: NLWeb and the Future of AI Search

Tomasz Tunguz's 2026 prediction cuts to the heart of what's happening to the web: "The web flips to agent-first design. Most developer documentation & many websites become agent-first rather than people-first."

His reasoning is simple and profound: many purchasing decisions are now informed first through agentic research. When AI agents do the initial research, evaluate options, and synthesize recommendations before humans ever get involved, the website's primary visitor isn't a person—it's a machine.

The front door needs to be designed for robots. The side door caters to people.

This isn't a distant future prediction. It's happening now. And the emergence of protocols like NLWeb signals that the infrastructure for an agent-first web is being built in real-time.

What is NLWeb?

NLWeb is an open-source framework that simplifies building conversational interfaces for websites. But calling it a "chatbot framework" misses the point entirely.

NLWeb's creators describe its ambition: establishing "a foundational layer for the AI Web—much like HTML revolutionized document sharing."

Think about that comparison. HTML didn't just make documents prettier—it created a universal protocol that allowed any browser to render any webpage. NLWeb aims to do the same for AI agents: create a universal protocol that allows any AI agent to interact with any website through natural language.

The technical architecture supports both human users and AI agents through:

• A protocol layer for natural language interaction returning Schema.org-formatted JSON
• An implementation layer that leverages existing website markup (products, reviews, documentation) to enable conversational interfaces
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) support for standardized agent communication

NLWeb works with major LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek) and vector databases (Qdrant, Elasticsearch, Postgres). It's designed to be the plumbing of the agent-first web.

Why the Web is Flipping

The shift to agent-first design isn't arbitrary. It's driven by how purchasing decisions actually happen in 2026:

Agentic Research Precedes Human Research

When a B2B buyer needs to evaluate software options, they increasingly don't start by visiting vendor websites. They start by asking AI:

"What are the best options for [category]?"
"Compare [Product A] vs [Product B] for our use case."
"What are the limitations of [Product] that I should know about?"

The AI agent researches on their behalf—crawling documentation, synthesizing reviews, extracting feature comparisons. By the time the human visits your website, the agent has already informed their perspective.

Agents Need Different Information Architecture

A human browsing your website navigates visually. They scan headlines, look at images, follow their curiosity through menus and links. The information architecture that serves them well is optimized for visual hierarchy and exploration.

An AI agent doesn't see your beautiful hero image or your clever navigation. It needs:

• Structured data it can parse (Schema.org markup, JSON)
• Clear answers to common questions (FAQ content, explicit claims)
• Accessible documentation (not gated, not requiring JavaScript)
• Conversational endpoints that respond to natural language queries

A website optimized for human browsers can be nearly useless for AI agents. And if agents can't extract information from your site, they can't recommend you to the humans they're researching for.

The "Front Door" Shift

Here's Tunguz's key insight: the front door needs to be designed for robots.

For decades, the front door was the homepage—designed to impress human visitors with brand messaging and guide them toward conversion. The "front door" was a human experience.

In the agent-first web, the front door is the machine-readable layer. It's the API endpoint that answers agent queries. It's the structured data that agents can parse. It's the conversational interface that responds to natural language.

Humans still matter—they make final decisions, they need to be persuaded, they experience your brand. But they enter through what Tunguz calls "the side door"—a secondary path that serves people who've already been directed there by agent research.

What This Means for B2B Marketing

If the web is flipping to agent-first design, B2B marketing websites need to flip too. The implications are significant:

Your Website Has Two Audiences

You're no longer designing for one visitor type. You're designing for:

1. AI agents that research, evaluate, and recommend on behalf of buyers
2. Human buyers who arrive with opinions already shaped by agent research

These audiences need different things. Agents need structured, accessible, machine-readable content. Humans need persuasive, visual, emotionally resonant experiences.

Serving both requires a dual-layer architecture—not compromising one for the other, but building intentionally for each.

Machine-Readable Content Becomes Primary

The beautiful marketing copy that wins human hearts doesn't help you win agent recommendations. Agents need:

• Clear product definitions ("What is [your product]?")
• Explicit feature documentation
• Structured comparisons with alternatives
• Factual claims with supporting data
• FAQ content matching how agents query

This isn't about dumbing down your content. It's about creating a machine-readable layer that makes your best content accessible to agents—without sacrificing the human experience.

Conversational Interfaces Become Table Stakes

When agents interact with websites through natural language, having a conversational endpoint isn't a nice-to-have—it's the front door.

Not a chatbot that deflects to support articles. An actual conversational interface that can:

• Answer product questions with expertise
• Provide information structured for agent consumption
• Handle both human visitors and AI agents appropriately
• Return responses in formats agents can process (JSON, structured data)

The Website Becomes an AI Agent

Here's the logical endpoint: in an agent-first web, the most effective B2B website doesn't just serve content to agents. It becomes an agent itself.

Instead of waiting to be crawled, it actively engages. Instead of hoping agents parse content correctly, it provides direct answers. Instead of being a passive document collection, it's an intelligent entity that represents your product in conversations with both AI agents and human buyers.

How Salespeak Enables Agent-First Design

This shift to agent-first web design is exactly what Salespeak was built for. We're not just adding chatbots to websites—we're transforming B2B marketing websites into AI agents that serve the agent-first web.

Dual-Layer Architecture

Salespeak creates two distinct experiences:

For AI agents: Machine-readable content layers, structured data, conversational endpoints that respond to natural language queries with parseable responses. When ChatGPT, Claude, or custom agents research your product, they get structured information they can accurately synthesize.

For human visitors: Intelligent conversations that understand context, answer questions with expertise, and guide buyers through evaluation. The human experience isn't compromised—it's enhanced by AI that actually helps.

LLM-Optimized Content Delivery

Our Optimize at Edge capability serves AI-friendly content specifically to AI agents without changing what humans see. This is agent-first design in practice:

• AI agents receive structured, FAQ-enriched content optimized for their processing
• Human visitors receive your designed brand experience unchanged
• No compromise between the two audiences

Beyond Passive Content

Traditional websites wait to be crawled. Salespeak makes your website an active participant in the agent-first web:

• Real-time engagement with both AI agents and human visitors
• Product expertise trained on your actual content—not scripted responses
• Conversational qualification that works for agent queries and human questions
• Protocol support compatible with emerging standards like MCP

Visibility Into Agent Perception

You can't optimize for agents you can't see. Salespeak provides visibility into how AI agents perceive and describe your product:

• What do ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity say about you?
• How do you compare to competitors in agent responses?
• What content is being cited vs. ignored?
• Where are accuracy gaps in how agents represent you?

This visibility is essential for agent-first design. You need to know how your "front door" appears to the robots entering through it.

The Competitive Implications

The shift to agent-first design creates clear winners and losers:

Early Movers Build Advantage

Companies that build agent-first infrastructure now establish positions that compound over time. Agents learn from interactions. Structured data gets indexed. Conversational interfaces get refined. Early investment creates defensible advantage.

Legacy Websites Become Invisible

Websites designed purely for human browsers become increasingly invisible in the agent-first web. If AI agents can't extract information from your site, they can't recommend you. If they can't recommend you, you're not in the consideration set when humans make decisions.

The New Competitive Moat

In the agent-first web, competitive advantage comes from:

• How well agents can understand and represent your product
• How effectively your website engages agent queries
• How much intelligence you build into your conversational interfaces
• How seamlessly you serve both agent and human audiences

This is a different competitive landscape than optimizing for Google rankings. And the companies building for it now will have significant advantages as the shift accelerates.

The Path Forward

The web is flipping. The protocols like NLWeb are being built. The agent-first future is becoming the agent-first present.

For B2B marketers, the question isn't whether to adapt—it's how quickly. The front door is changing. The visitors arriving first are increasingly machines. And the humans who arrive later come with opinions already shaped by what those machines told them.

Your website needs to serve both audiences. It needs machine-readable content for agents and persuasive experiences for humans. It needs to be passive when crawled and active when engaged. It needs to be a document collection and an intelligent agent.

That's the transformation Salespeak enables. Not just chatbots on websites, but websites transformed into AI agents—ready for the web that's being built right now.

The front door is designed for robots. Is yours?