generated: '2026-08-22'
method: probed
source: live probes of hackernoon.com and its sibling hosts, 2026-08-22
note: >-
  HackerNoon publishes no API contract, so every API-shaped standard below is recorded as
  not conformed on evidence of absence rather than assumed. What HackerNoon DOES publish is a
  content-syndication and AI-access surface, and that is where its real standards conformance
  sits: robots.txt (RFC 9309), RSS 2.0, sitemaps.org 0.9 and the llms.txt convention.
conformance:
  - id: robots-exclusion-protocol
    name: Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309)
    conforms: true
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/robots.txt
      status: 200
      detail: >-
        4,959-byte robots.txt, "Last updated: April 30, 2026". Default-deny (`User-agent: *`
        / `Disallow: /`) with an explicit per-crawler allowlist of 18 search and AI-retrieval
        agents and an explicit denylist of 20 AI-training agents, plus `Crawl-delay: 10`
        and a `Sitemap:` directive. Saved verbatim to llms/hackernoon-robots.txt.
  - id: llms-txt
    name: llms.txt convention
    conforms: true
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/llms.txt
      status: 200
      detail: >-
        4,884-byte markdown llms.txt served as text/plain, with H1 + blockquote summary,
        key-URL section, permitted/prohibited AI use, citation format and licensing contact.
        Saved verbatim to llms/hackernoon-llms.txt.
  - id: rss-2.0
    name: RSS 2.0
    conforms: true
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/feed
      status: 200
      detail: >-
        application/rss+xml, 881KB, `<rss>` with the dc: and content: namespaces. Per-tag
        feeds are served at the same shape (e.g. /tagged/api/feed, HTTP 200).
  - id: sitemaps-0.9
    name: sitemaps.org protocol 0.9
    conforms: true
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/sitemap.xml
      status: 200
      detail: >-
        Valid `<sitemapindex>` in the sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 namespace, indexing
        32 paginated sitemaps plus a startups and a skills sitemap.
  - id: security-txt
    name: RFC 9116 security.txt
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/.well-known/security.txt
      status: 404
      detail: >-
        Not served on any HackerNoon host. HackerNoon does run a Bug Bounty Program
        (github.com/hackernoon/bug-bounty-champions), so the disclosure channel exists but
        is not machine-discoverable.
  - id: openapi
    name: OpenAPI
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/openapi.json
      status: 308
      detail: >-
        308-redirects to the site root, as do all unknown top-level paths. No OpenAPI or
        Swagger document was found on any HackerNoon host or on api.hackernoon.com.
  - id: graphql
    name: GraphQL
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://api.hackernoon.com/graphql
      status: 403
      detail: >-
        api.hackernoon.com answers every path with a Cloudflare interstitial (403). No
        GraphQL endpoint is documented anywhere on HackerNoon's public surface.
  - id: mcp
    name: Model Context Protocol
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/llms.txt
      status: 200
      detail: >-
        No MCP server is published or referenced. The llms.txt states a "Live content feed
        API (coming Q3 2026)" as forthcoming, not shipped.
  - id: a2a-agent-card
    name: A2A Agent Card
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/.well-known/agent-card.json
      status: 404
      detail: Probed on all ten HackerNoon-controlled hosts, both canonical and legacy paths. No card.
  - id: oauth2
    name: OAuth 2.0 / OIDC
    conforms: false
    evidence:
      url: https://hackernoon.com/.well-known/openid-configuration
      status: 404
      detail: No authorization-server or OIDC discovery document on any host.
domain_standards:
  note: >-
    REWARD-ONLY and NOT awarded. HackerNoon's market — tech publishing and AI content
    licensing — does now have machine-readable opt-out standards, and HackerNoon asserts the
    underlying legal reservation in prose while implementing none of them. Recorded here as a
    measured gap, not as conformance.
  standards:
    - id: tdmrep
      name: TDM Reservation Protocol (/.well-known/tdmrep.json)
      conforms: false
      evidence:
        url: https://hackernoon.com/.well-known/tdmrep.json
        status: 404
        detail: >-
          llms.txt states "Rights reserved under Article 4 of the European Union Directive
          2019/790" — the exact reservation TDMRep exists to express machine-readably — but
          no tdmrep.json is served.
    - id: rsl
      name: Really Simple Licensing (RSL)
      conforms: false
      evidence:
        url: https://hackernoon.com/.well-known/rsl.xml
        status: 404
        detail: >-
          No RSL document and no `License:` directive in robots.txt, despite robots.txt
          carrying a licensing URL in a comment line that machines do not read.
    - id: ai-txt
      name: ai.txt
      conforms: false
      evidence:
        url: https://hackernoon.com/ai.txt
        status: 200
        detail: >-
          200 but the body is the site's HTML homepage shell (303,672 bytes, text/html),
          not an ai.txt document. Rejected as a soft-404.
certifications: []
compliance_programs: []