# Chewy: 44 point Door Gap
- Site: chewy.com
- Scanned: 2026-09-08
- Scan type: Basic scan
- Business type: content
- Report: https://www.seconddoor.io/r/chewy-gsdvzn
- Scanner version: 12
A pet supply retailer blocks browser automation while publishing content to AI crawlers, creating friction for assistant shopping and agent verification.
## Scores
| Measure | Score |
| --- | --- |
| Humans | 94/100 |
| Agents | 50/100 |
| Composite | 72/100 |
| Door Gap | 44 points |
The human score is the mean of the four human dimensions, the agent score the mean of the six agent dimensions, and the Door Gap the difference between them.
## What the machine actually did
The agent got through 7 of 13 requests, but could not read the site's own guide for language models. It came up empty on 5 other checks too.
- ok      reach the site at all
- ok      find out whether machines are welcome
- ok      ask whether the door opens for requests carrying the AI crawlers' names
- missing read the site's own guide for language models
- ok      find out what pages exist
- ok      find a contact route for machines
- missing find a published agent interface
- missing find an agent plugin manifest
- missing find out whether verified agents are recognised
- ok      read the homepage as data rather than as a page
- missing find a machine readable API spec
- missing read the developer documentation
- ok      walk the way a visitor would, to a signup form or a product
## Top issues
1. **No MCP manifest, ai-plugin.json, or OpenAPI spec is published, leaving agents without a machine-readable interface to the site.** (agent_aware_instrumentation)
2. **No llms.txt is published at the site root, so assistants get no curated map of what matters here.** (machine_discoverability)
The evidence and the recommended fix for each are on the report page: https://www.seconddoor.io/r/chewy-gsdvzn
## Files generated from this scan
- **Let verified assistants through** at `notes`, 1 hour, developer. Verify: The next scan opens the homepage and the key pages in a real browser and under the search crawler names, and every one is served.
- **robots.txt rules for AI crawlers** at `/robots.txt`, 10 minutes, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan reads robots.txt and finds every search and agent crawler allowed, none of them kept off product or pricing paths.
- **Machine interfaces: where you stand** at `notes`, 10 minutes, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan finds the interface you published answering at its well-known path, and that check passes.
- **llms.txt** at `/llms.txt`, 15 minutes, no developer needed. Verify: The next scan fetches /llms.txt as text and the llms.txt check passes.
Each file is written from what this scan found on the site. The content is in the JSON once the evidence is opened: https://www.seconddoor.io/api/reports/chewy-gsdvzn
## The agent door
- **machine_discoverability** 56/100. No AI crawler is blocked by robots.txt, and a sitemap lists 13 child sitemaps with URLs for discovery. However, a real browser is refused with a 403 error, which is how assistant shopping arrives.
- **programmatic_onboarding** null/100. Not scored: a blog is not measured on this.
- **pricing_legibility** null/100. Not scored: a blog is not measured on this.
- **agent_aware_instrumentation** 8/100. No MCP manifest is published at any of the 3 standard paths checked. No ai-plugin.json or OpenAPI spec exists. The site offers no machine-readable way for agents to understand what they can do here beyond reading pages.
- **machine_fetchable_trust** 85/100. security.txt is published at /.well-known/security.txt with a contact route for machines to report issues. The homepage resolves in 1263ms and serves structured data to automated clients.
- **commercial_rails** null/100. Not scored: a blog is not measured on this.
## The human door
- **steps_to_first_value** 95/100. The product is usable immediately with no account required. No signup form exists on the homepage, no sign-in link is present, and the entry path walk found 0 steps to a call to action.
- **required_fields** 100/100. No form exists on the homepage and no account is required to access content. The entry path walk counted 0 required fields because there is nothing to ask. A visitor provides nothing to read.
- **verification_walls** 100/100. No account system exists, so there is no verification step. The site needs no email, phone, or identity check. A visitor is verified by virtue of arriving.
- **error_recovery** 80/100. No form exists on the homepage to generate errors. The site serves content directly without validation steps. Error recovery cannot be measured on a read-only path, but the absence of a form means there is nothing to get wrong on entry.
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Scored by SecondDoor. Method: https://www.seconddoor.io/methodology
Scan another site: https://www.seconddoor.io
Rate an issue or this report: POST https://www.seconddoor.io/api/feedback, or the rate_fix tool on https://www.seconddoor.io/api/mcp