Buyer's guide.

§ 1Evaluation questions

The four questions below correspond to the four pillars in § 5 of the AXL Reference. A response that does not address all four indicates a gap relative to L1 conformance.

1. Does the platform collect behavioural signal identity-free at request time, or does it require a persistent identifier? (Pillar: Perceive)
2. Does the platform select treatment autonomously at request time, or is selection driven by pre-configured rules? (Pillar: Decide)
3. Is the rendering of selected content framework-agnostic and flicker-free on a standards-compliant browser? (Pillar: Render)
4. Does the platform report statistical significance and lift at the treatment level continuously, or in quarterly batches? (Pillar: Learn)

§ 2Artifacts to require

• A published Conformance Statement at L1 or higher.
• For L2 claims: a reproducible link to Appendix A benchmark execution.
• The §7 agentic interface surface, exposed for your engineering team to test against.
• For L3 claims: the reviewer report at axlspec.org/certified/[vendor].
• A clear statement of which AXL specification version the attestation covers.

§ 3Indicators of non-conformance

• Use of the AXL™ symbol absent presence in the certified registry.
• Use of “AXL-compliant” rather than “AXL-conformant”: the former is not a defined term in this specification.
• Absence of a published Conformance Statement at any level.
• Claim of L3 conformance without a corresponding public reviewer report.
• Decide capability contingent on pre-configured segments rather than session-time autonomous selection (§ 5.2).

§ 4RFP question bank

A reference RFP question bank, mapped clause-by-clause to § 5 of the specification, is forthcoming in the project repository at github.com/tony-toubia/axlspec.org and may be reused in procurement documents.

§ 5Out of scope

This guide does not address commercial terms, vendor financial stability, data-residency requirements, or professional services. Those concerns lie outside the scope of the AXL Reference.