Let AI assistants message you or ask for a quote

In short

An assistant can message you when your site offers a door that takes a message: an A2A agent, a message tool, or an agent inbox. For trades, let it ask for a quote too. Email, phone, forms and chat widgets are made for people.

What an assistant needs

“Ask the plumber whether they can come tomorrow, and what it would cost.” An assistant can do that for its person when it has:

A door that takes a message, and a way to come back for the answer.
An answer it can read, whether it comes from a person, from rules you set, or from your own AI.
For a quote, a way to ask for one, and then to accept or decline the price you send.

Your contact form, email address, phone number and chat widget are made for people. An assistant may try some of them for its person, but it can’t count on an answer it can read, and our check doesn’t count them.

Being askable matters beyond the message itself: a business an agent can message is agent-ready, so it’s listed by name and its result page can appear in search, unless its site tells AI systems not to use its content.

If you answer in a helpdesk or a chat app

Many businesses already answer customers in a helpdesk, a CRM or a chat app. The chat widget on your site is for people. To let assistants in, put an agent door in front and bridge it to the tool you use: a message to the door opens a ticket or a conversation, and the reply goes back to the door, where the assistant reads it. Ask your helpdesk whether it offers a door for customers’ agents; if it doesn’t yet, the bridge is a small piece of work with its webhooks and its API.

Quotes

Trades and quote-led services live on quotes. An assistant can ask for one when a door takes a quote request, and the job goes further when it can accept your price, or counter it, and then book the visit. Keep the quote and the booking linked, so the assistant doesn’t have to start again.

What counts in the check

We read what your site and its doors declare, and never send a message to test them:

Message: an A2A agent card (every A2A agent takes messages), an agent inbox, or a tool or an operation such as send_message, contact, ask_question or POST /messages.
Quote: request_quote, make_offer, accept_offer, POST /quotes, or an agent inbox that takes quote requests. Quotes count toward the score of trades and quote-led services.

Not counted: email, phone, forms and chat widgets.

A message counts toward the score of most kinds of business. A shop or a gym is scored on ordering or signing up instead, though a door that takes messages still makes it askable.

Your options

Way	What it takes
Build it	An A2A agent card at `/.well-known/agent-card.json` for an AI agent of your own, or `send_message` and `request_quote` on an MCP server or in an OpenAPI document on your domain. A2A MCP OpenAPI
Your helpdesk or chat tool	Ask whether it offers a door for customers' agents. If it doesn't, a small bridge does the job: a message to the door opens a ticket, and your reply goes back through the door.
Surfing Dog Inbox (ours, open source)	Free software (MIT) you run at your own subdomain, such as inbox.yourbusiness.example. Agents write to you there and ask for quotes; your rules answer routine ones, and you see the rest. An accepted quote can become a booking. You answer from its app, from your helpdesk through a bridge, or with your own AI. On Cloudflare the free plan runs it, and sending email needs a paid Workers plan, about $5 a month; or run it on your own server. There's no hosted version yet. How it works Install it
Others	Any agent platform that gives you an A2A agent or an MCP server for messages, on your own domain or linked from it.

Check it worked

Once your change is live, check your site. We read it the way a customer's assistant would, and show what it can do there now, and what's still missing.

Or open the checker. If your site was read recently, you'll see that read, and when you can ask for a fresh one.