The Collaboration Tunnel (TCT)
Efficient, verifiable content delivery for AI crawlers. Reduce bandwidth by 83%, tokens by 86%.
The Trusted Collaboration Tunnel protocol enables efficient machine-readable content delivery through bidirectional discovery, template-invariant fingerprinting, and sitemap-first optimization. An open, royalty-free standard.
Measured Results from 970+ Production URLs
83% Bandwidth Savings
103 KB → 17.7 KB average per fetch
86% Token Reduction
13,900 → 1,960 tokens for AI processing
90%+ Skip Rate
Unchanged content detected via ETag
970+ URLs
Across 3 production sites with 100% compliance
8,158 GWh/year
Potential energy savings at 10% adoption
How It Works: 4-Part Protocol
1. Bidirectional Discovery
- C-URL contains:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/json" href="M-URL"> - M-URL responds:
Link: <C-URL>; rel="canonical" - Verifiable handshake prevents URL guessing
2. Template-Invariant Fingerprinting
- Content normalized (strip HTML, CSS, JS)
- SHA-256 hash → ETag header
- Same content = same hash, regardless of theme changes
3. Conditional Request Discipline
- Client sends:
If-None-Match: "sha256-abc123..." - Server responds:
304 Not Modified(zero body) - 90%+ of requests skip full fetch
4. Sitemap-First Verification
/llm-sitemap.jsonlists all URLs + hashes- Client compares local cache vs sitemap
- Only fetch changed content
- Zero-fetch optimization
Production Sites (100% Compliant)
- wellbeing-support.com (400 URLs, 10/10)
- omacedonii.com (45 URLs, 10/10)
- bestdemotivationalposters.com (500 URLs, 9/10)
Test Your Implementation: llmpages.org/validator
An Open, Royalty-Free Standard
The Collaboration Tunnel Protocol (TCT) is an open standard designed to build a more efficient and sustainable web for the AI era.
The core protocol, as defined in draft-jurkovikj-collab-tunnel, is and always will be available for anyone to implement under a perpetual, irrevocable, Royalty-Free (RF) license. There is no commercial licensing fee for implementing the TCT standard.
Our full, official IPR disclosure is available for public review on the IETF Datatracker:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/7074/
Our goal is to foster a vibrant, open ecosystem around a free and universal standard. The open-source reference implementations (WordPress, Cloudflare, Python) are provided to accelerate adoption.
IETF Standards Track
Target: IETF 125 (March 2026) | Working Group: GREEN (energy efficiency)
Network savings: 0.06 kWh/GB reduced | AI inference savings: 0.000187 kWh/token reduced