Frequently Asked Questions

General

What is TCT?

Trusted Collaboration Tunnel (TCT) is a protocol for efficient, verifiable content delivery to AI crawlers. It reduces bandwidth by 83% and tokens by 86% based on 970+ production URLs.

How much bandwidth does it save?

83% average savings – 103 KB → 17.7 KB per fetch, measured across 970+ URLs on 3 production sites.

How much does it reduce AI token costs?

86% token reduction – 13,900 → 1,960 tokens average, reducing AI processing costs significantly.

What is the skip rate?

90%+ skip rate – When content is unchanged, conditional requests return 304 Not Modified with zero body, eliminating redundant transfers.

For Publishers

Will this affect my SEO?

No. TCT preserves canonical URLs and only affects AI crawlers. Search engines continue to crawl regular HTML. Google and Bing rankings are unaffected.

Does it work with my WordPress theme?

Yes. Content hashes are template-invariant – same content produces the same hash regardless of theme, CSS, or JavaScript changes.

What if I change themes?

No problem. The plugin extracts core content independent of templates. Content hashes remain stable across theme changes.

Is it free?

Yes for website owners. The WordPress plugin is GPL v2+, the Cloudflare Worker is MIT licensed. No cost to implement on your own sites.

How do I validate my implementation?

Use the validator at llmpages.org/validator – Target score is 10/10 for full compliance.

For AI Crawlers

How do I discover TCT endpoints?

Start with the sitemap at /llm-sitemap.json or look for <link rel="alternate" type="application/json"> in HTML.

What client libraries are available?

Python library: pip install collab-tunnel – Handles sitemap discovery, ETag caching, and verification automatically.

How do I verify content authenticity?

Compare the ETag (SHA-256 content hash) with your own hash of the normalized content. Mismatches indicate tampering.

Technical

What is template-invariant fingerprinting?

Content is normalized (HTML/CSS/JS stripped) before hashing. Same content = same hash, even if the template changes. This enables stable caching across redesigns.

What is the 4-part protocol?

Bidirectional Discovery – C-URL ↔ M-URL handshake
Template-Invariant Fingerprinting – SHA-256 content hashes
Conditional Request Discipline – 304 Not Modified responses
Sitemap-First Verification – Zero-fetch optimization

What are the production deployment results?

wellbeing-support.com – 400 URLs, 10/10 score, 83% bandwidth savings
galaxybilliard.club – 500 URLs, 10/10 score, 83% bandwidth savings
bestdemotivationalposters.com – 500 URLs, 9/10 score, 83% bandwidth savings

Total: 970+ URLs with verified performance.

Energy Efficiency

How much energy does TCT save?

At 10% adoption across top 10,000 sites:

8,158 GWh/year energy saved
4,079,057 metric tons CO₂ avoided
Equivalent to 885,000 cars removed from roads

How is energy savings calculated?

Network transmission: 0.06 kWh/GB reduced
AI inference: 0.000187 kWh/token reduced
Scaled across projected adoption

Patent & Licensing

Is TCT patented?

Yes – US Patent Application 63/895,763 filed October 8, 2025 (Patent Pending).

Can I use it on my website?

Yes – Free for all website owners. No license fee, no restrictions.

What about commercial use?

Website owners: Free. Large-scale AI companies/CDNs processing >10K URLs/month: Contact [email protected] for licensing.

IETF Standards

Is TCT being standardized?

Yes – Target IETF 125 (March 2026) via the GREEN Working Group (energy efficiency).

Where is the specification?

GitHub: github.com/antunjurkovic-collab/collab-tunnel-spec

FAQ