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Getting Started

Citelayer® Quick Start Guide — AI-Visible in Five Minutes

7 min read


Why This Matters

You installed Citelayer® and it activated without errors. But how do you know it actually works? This guide walks you through five verification steps that confirm every AI Visibility protocol is live on your site. You complete them in five minutes, and you finish with proof that AI systems can now discover, parse, and cite your content.

No configuration required. If you have not installed Citelayer® yet, start with the Installation guide and come back here.

Step 1: Open the Dashboard and Check Active Features

In your WordPress admin, click the Citelayer® menu item in the sidebar. The Dashboard loads and displays your AI Visibility status at a glance.

Look at the Active Features panel. You should see each protocol listed with its status:

  • Schema.org JSON-LD — Active
  • llms.txt — Active
  • Markdown Endpoints — Active
  • WebMCP — Active

If all four show as active, Citelayer® is generating AI-readable output across your entire site. The Dashboard also shows content statistics — how many posts and pages are currently covered.

If any feature shows as inactive, check the Requirements page to confirm your environment meets the prerequisites.

Step 2: Verify Your llms.txt File

Open a new browser tab and navigate to:

https://yoursite.com/llms.txt

Replace yoursite.com with your actual domain. You should see a structured plain-text file that looks like this:

# Your Site Name

> Your site description or tagline.

## About This Site
General information about your site's purpose and content.

## Contact
Contact details pulled from your WordPress settings.

## Content Statistics
Published posts, pages, and other content type counts.

## Semantic API Endpoints
Links to your Markdown, JSON-LD, and other machine-readable endpoints.

## AI-Optimized Content
Pages and posts most relevant for AI consumption.

## Recent Posts
A list of your most recently published content with URLs.

---
Generated by Citelayer®

The exact content reflects your site’s data — your real site name, your actual post count, your real URLs. The structure follows the llms.txt specification, and the file regenerates automatically whenever you publish or update content.

What you just confirmed: LLMs that request /llms.txt now receive a structured overview of your site, including what content you offer and how to access it.

Step 3: View a Post as Markdown

Pick any published post on your site. Take its URL and append .md to the slug. For example, if your post URL is:

https://yoursite.com/my-first-post/

Visit:

https://yoursite.com/my-first-post.md

You should see a clean Markdown version of your post. It starts with YAML frontmatter containing metadata, followed by the content converted to Markdown:

---
title: "My First Post"
url: "https://yoursite.com/my-first-post/"
date: "2025-01-15"
---

# My First Post

Your post content appears here as clean Markdown, with headers,
paragraphs, lists, and links preserved — but all HTML layout,
navigation, sidebars, and scripts stripped away.

If you open your browser’s developer tools (F12 → Network tab) and reload the page, you see the response headers that Citelayer® sends with every Markdown endpoint:

  • Content-Type: text/markdown — Tells the requesting agent this is Markdown, not HTML.
  • X-Markdown-Tokens — The approximate token count for the content, helping AI systems estimate context window usage.
  • X-Citelayer-Version — The Citelayer® version generating the output.
  • Content-Signal — A signal header indicating this content is optimized for AI consumption.

What you just confirmed: AI agents that request your content as Markdown receive a clean, structured document with metadata — no parsing of messy HTML required. Learn more about how agents use these endpoints in the Markdown for Agents documentation.

Step 4: Check Schema.org JSON-LD in Your Page Source

Navigate to any published post or page on your site in your browser. Right-click the page and select View Page Source (or press Ctrl+U / Cmd+U).

Use your browser’s find function (Ctrl+F / Cmd+F) and search for:

<!-- Citelayer® Schema.org Markup -->

Directly below that comment, you find a <script type="application/ld+json"> block containing your structured data. It looks something like this:

<!-- Citelayer® Schema.org Markup -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "My First Post",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Your Name"
  },
  "datePublished": "2025-01-15",
  "dateModified": "2025-01-20",
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Your Site Name"
  }
}
</script>

The exact properties vary based on your content type, author information, and site settings. Citelayer® generates the appropriate Schema type automatically — Article for posts, WebPage for pages, and more specific types where applicable.

What you just confirmed: Every page on your site carries machine-readable structured data that tells AI systems exactly what the content is, who wrote it, and when it was published. For a deeper look at the Schema types and properties Citelayer® generates, see the Schema.org JSON-LD documentation.

Step 5: Inspect Your WebMCP context.json

Open a browser tab and navigate to:

https://yoursite.com/.well-known/mcp/context.json

You should see a JSON document that describes your site’s capabilities for AI agents. The structure looks like this:

{
  "mcp_version": "1.0",
  "site": {
    "name": "Your Site Name",
    "description": "Your site description",
    "url": "https://yoursite.com",
    "type": "blog",
    "platform": "WordPress"
  },
  "capabilities": [
    "markdown-content",
    "schema-jsonld",
    "llms-txt",
    "rest-api"
  ],
  "endpoints": {
    "llms_txt": "/llms.txt",
    "markdown": "/{slug}.md",
    "schema": "automatic (in-page)",
    "rest_api": "/wp-json/citelayer/v1/"
  }
}

This file tells AI agents that support the Model Context Protocol exactly what your site provides and where to find each resource. Your site name, description, and URL come from your WordPress settings. The capabilities and endpoints reflect what Citelayer® has activated.

What you just confirmed: AI agents using MCP can discover your site’s capabilities programmatically and access content through the correct endpoints. Read more in the WebMCP documentation.

Congratulations — Your Site Is Now AI-Visible

You just verified all four AI Visibility protocols that Citelayer® provides:

  1. llms.txt gives LLMs a structured site overview.
  2. Markdown endpoints deliver clean content to AI agents.
  3. Schema.org JSON-LD embeds structured metadata in every page.
  4. WebMCP context.json advertises your site’s capabilities to MCP-compatible agents.

Your content is now discoverable, parseable, and citable by AI assistants including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and any agent that follows these protocols. As you publish new posts and pages, Citelayer® picks them up automatically — no manual steps required.

The citelayer.ai site uses Citelayer® itself. You can run through these same five steps on that domain to see a reference implementation.

What to Explore Next

Now that the basics are confirmed, dive deeper into each feature:

  • Dashboard — Understand every panel and metric in the Citelayer® admin.
  • Schema.org JSON-LD — Learn which Schema types are generated and how to customize them.
  • llms.txt — Understand the structure and how content selection works.
  • Markdown for Agents — Headers, token counts, and agent interaction patterns.
  • WebMCP — The Model Context Protocol in detail.
  • UCP Discovery — How Unified Content Protocol helps agents find the right format.
  • SEO Compatibility — How Citelayer® works alongside your existing SEO setup.
  • Hooks & Filters — Customize Citelayer® output with WordPress actions and filters.
  • REST API — Programmatic access to Citelayer® data.
  • Frequently Asked Questions — Answers to common questions about AI Visibility and Citelayer®.

Step 6: Check Your Bot Analytics

After installation, Citelayer® automatically starts tracking AI bot visits to your site. To see the data, go to Citelayer® → Bot Analytics.

The Overview tab shows four stat cards: total bot visits, and breakdowns for the last 7, 30, and 90 days. Below that, a trend chart displays daily visit counts. If you’ve just installed the plugin, you may see zero visits initially — that’s normal. AI crawlers operate on their own schedules, and it can take hours or days for the first visits to appear.

The Top Bots section shows which AI crawlers have visited your site most frequently. Common entries include GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and PerplexityBot.

If you see no visits after several days, check the Cache Config tab. See Cache Plugin Compatibility for detailed instructions.

Step 7: Run the AI Readiness Scanner

The AI Readiness Scanner audits your site’s AI visibility configuration and gives you a score from 0 to 100. Go to Citelayer® → AI Readiness Scanner and click Run Scan.

  • Whether your structured data validates
  • Whether robots.txt blocks AI crawlers
  • Whether llms.txt is accessible
  • Whether Content-Signal Headers are configured and working
  • (WooCommerce only) Whether the Product Feed is enabled and products have adequate content

Each check returns pass, warn, info, or fail. A score of 80+ indicates solid AI visibility setup. Below 50 suggests significant issues.

The scanner results are cached. To re-run after making changes, click Reset & Rescan.