We help organizations design websites that work for both humans and machines.
That is our entire focus. Not general web development. Not generic digital transformation. Machine Experience: the methodology that makes websites understandable, parseable, and actionable for every machine that consumes them.
The Founding Insight
In 2024, Tom Cranstoun, a content management systems (CMS) expert with experience going back to 2001, noticed something troubling:
Companies were spending millions optimizing websites for human visitors while completely ignoring the AI agents browsing alongside them. Forms that worked perfectly for humans failed spectacularly for agents. Pricing information visible to anyone with eyes was completely opaque to machines. Contact details prominently displayed were unparseable by AI shopping assistants.
The web was evolving. Web design wasn’t.
That realization led to the development of Machine Experience (MX) methodology, a systematic approach to designing websites that serve all users, human and machine, without compromise.
Our Mission
Make the web work for everyone and everything that uses it.
For 30 years, web design was built exclusively for humans. That made sense when humans were the only users. AI agents are not replacing humans; they are joining them, and they deserve first-class experiences too.
Bridging the Gap Between Human and Machine Users
CogNovaMX exists to bridge that gap, and to help organizations recognize that:
- AI agents are already here, browsing your site right now
- Designing for agents does not mean compromising human experience
- The things that help agents (structure, semantics, explicitness) also help humans
- Companies that adopt MX early build competitive moats
We believe the convergence of human accessibility and AI agent compatibility is not coincidental: it is fundamental. Good design serves all users, regardless of how they access your content. If you want a worked example of that argument, read Why an MX audit pays for itself; it shows how the same structural work pays back across human readers, machine readers, and EAA compliance at the same time.
The MX-Protocols
In 2025, Tom published MX-Protocols: Designing the Web for AI Agents and Everyone Else, the definitive guide to Machine Experience methodology.
The book examines how modern web design (built for human users with visual browsers) systematically fails for AI agents. It provides practical guidance for developers, designers, and business stakeholders navigating the shift to agent-mediated commerce.
Key insights from MX-Protocols:
- Why accessibility compliance is now the foundation of AI agent compatibility
- How Schema.org structured data transforms from nice-to-have to business-critical
- Why explicit intent declarations matter more than visual design patterns
- Real-world case studies of MX implementations and their business impact
Key Insights from the Book
The book has become required reading for forward-thinking web teams recognizing that AI agents are not a future concern; they are a present reality.
Our Approach
CogNovaMX doesn’t just consult. We implement, train, and enable.
We Start With Understanding
Before recommending solutions, we analyze your current state:
- How do AI agents currently interact with your site?
- Where are they succeeding? Where are they failing?
- What is the gap between human-built and agent-compatible design?
- What are the highest-impact changes you can make quickly?
We don’t sell generic MX packages. Every organization has different needs, different constraints, and different opportunities. We meet you where you are.
We Prioritise Impact Over Perfection
You don’t need to rebuild your entire website to benefit from MX. You need to fix the things that matter most:
- Critical user journeys (purchase flow, contact forms, key conversions)
- High-traffic pages (homepage, top products, main services)
- Competitive differentiators (unique features agents should know about)
We help you implement incrementally, starting with changes that deliver immediate value and building from there.
We Transfer Knowledge
Our goal isn’t to make you dependent on us. It’s to make you self-sufficient.
Every engagement includes:
- Training for your development team on MX principles
- Documentation of changes and why they matter
- Tools and checklists for maintaining MX compliance
- Frameworks for evaluating future design decisions through an MX lens
When we’re done, your team should understand MX as well as we do.
What MX Delivers
Machine Experience applies across industries. The pattern is consistent: when AI agents can read your content clearly, business outcomes improve:
E-commerce: Agents recommend products accurately, driving agent-mediated traffic and conversions.
Service businesses: Structured data makes you findable where AI agents previously couldn’t see you.
SaaS products: Explicit feature and pricing data lets agents answer comparison questions, supporting shorter sales cycles.
Content publishers: Clear attribution and structure lead to higher citation rates from AI agents.
The Underlying Principle
The principle is straightforward: when you remove guesswork for machines, every metric that matters improves: SEO, accessibility scores, agent recommendation frequency, and business outcomes.
Why Trust Us?
Deep Industry Expertise
Tom Cranstoun has been building content management systems since 2001. He’s seen the web evolve through multiple paradigm shifts:
- Static HTML → Dynamic databases
- Desktop-only → Mobile-first
- Human-only → Human-AND-agent
MX isn’t a trend we jumped on. It’s the culmination of 25 years watching how humans and machines interact with content.
We Practice What We Preach
This website exemplifies Machine Experience:
- Complete Schema.org markup on every page
- WCAG 2.1 AA compliant throughout
- Explicit state and intent declarations
- Semantic HTML with proper hierarchy
Browse this site with an AI agent. Ask it questions about our services, our approach, our background. It will answer accurately because we’ve structured everything explicitly.
We’re Methodology-Focused, Not Tool-Focused
We do not care what CMS you use, what framework powers your site, or what hosting provider you have chosen. MX principles work everywhere because they are fundamental web standards: HTML5, Schema.org, WCAG.
If you can edit HTML, you can implement MX. The methodology adapts to your stack, not the other way around.
The Team
Tom Cranstoun, Founder & Principal
CMS expert since 2001. Author of MX-Protocols. Industry speaker on Machine Experience and AI-agent compatibility.
Tom's background spans content management systems, information architecture, accessibility standards, and semantic web technologies. He has led some of the largest enterprise content programs in the industry, including Nissan-Renault (200+ websites across 30 languages), the BBC, Ford, McLaren, and EE (8,000 pages across three brand CMSs in 24 days, saving £450,000). He recognized early that the convergence of accessibility compliance and AI agent compatibility was not coincidental: it was inevitable.
Philosophy: "The web is evolving from human-only to human-AND-agent. Organizations that recognize this early will dominate their categories. Those that do not will become invisible to the machine layer making purchase decisions for millions of users."
Speaking and community
CogNovaMX presents Machine Experience at industry events through 2026. Tom spoke at the CMS Summit in Frankfurt in May 2026 and has been invited to MozFest in Barcelona in October 2026, with Mozilla in conversation as sponsor. Further engagements in Germany and Canada are in active discussion.
Our Network
CogNovaMX collaborates with specialists across disciplines:
- Accessibility consultants ensuring WCAG compliance
- Schema.org experts crafting structured data strategies
- UX researchers studying human-agent interaction patterns
- Developers implementing MX across diverse tech stacks
We bring the right expertise to your specific challenges.
Our Vision
We envision a web where:
- Every website is accessible to humans and explicitly structured for any machine agent
- Accessibility and agent-compatibility are recognized as the same problem
- Explicit, structured, semantic design is the standard, not the exception
- Users can trust that agents accurately represent the sites they interact with
That web isn’t decades away. It’s being built right now, one MX-compliant site at a time.
Organizations implementing Machine Experience today are defining the standards everyone else will follow tomorrow. They’re building recommendation advantages, SEO moats, and accessibility compliance that simultaneously serves humans and machines.
What We Don’t Do
We’re focused specialists, not generalists. We don’t:
- Build websites from scratch (we make existing ones MX-aware)
- Offer generic digital marketing services
- Provide ongoing hosting or maintenance
- Consult on general UX/UI design
We do one thing exceptionally well: transform human-only websites into human-AND-agent experiences.
If your needs extend beyond MX, we have trusted partners we can recommend. But when it comes to Machine Experience specifically, we’re the definitive authority.
Get Started
Whether you’re just learning about Machine Experience or ready to implement it across your organization, we can help.
Our services include:
- MX Readiness Assessments (where are you now?)
- Strategic MX Planning (where should you go?)
- Implementation Support (how do you get there?)
- Team Training & Enablement (how do you maintain it?)
The first step is understanding your current state and goals.
→ Learn About Our Services → Get MX Consultation
CogNovaMX - Making the web work for humans and machines.
Founded 2025. Based on 25 years of CMS expertise and the principles documented in MX-Protocols.
The agents are already here. Let’s make sure they can find, understand, and recommend you.