Our view of where finance is going · 29 October 2026
ACCOUNTS.md Companies House for AI agents
Agents are going to run a lot of how companies are managed. Every one of them needs a front door to a company's finances. We think it is one file, and we started it.
Company finance is still written for people
Companies House has over 5 million companies on it, every one described for a human reader: a search box, a company page, and accounts filed as a PDF once a year.
Agents already do the bookkeeping, chase invoices and check suppliers. Next they will agree payment terms, underwrite loans and run due diligence. Every one of those jobs starts with the same questions: who is this company, how do I deal with it, and, if I am allowed, what do its books say? Today an agent answers them by scraping registers and reading PDFs that can be nearly two years old.
Software already solved this. Coding agents read a file called AGENTS.md before they touch a project, and it spread to tens of thousands of projects in months. Company finance has the same problem and no file. ACCOUNTS.md is that file.
One file, three tiers. Pick who is asking.
What an agent sees depends on who it is and what the owner has allowed. Consent sits with the owner, never the platform.
Who is asking?
Granted figures for 30 days to decide on a loan.
- PublicIdentity and directorsExample Trading Ltd · 01234567Companies House
- PublicHow to invoice, payment termsPeppol · 30 daysSelf-declared
- PublicFiled accountsTurnover £1.24mFiled · 15 months old
- GrantedAnswer: cover £50k on 60-day terms?YesLedger · 5 minutes old
- GrantedLive P&L and balance sheetNet assets £318kLedger · 5 minutes old
- GrantedCash and debtorsCash £188kLedger, bank matched
- GrantedThe ledger Not shared
- OwnerRules and preferences Not shared
- OwnerWho has seen what Not shared
Illustrative company and figures. Grants are the next step on our roadmap; the public and owner tiers are live today.
Why an agent would trust it
A file a company writes about itself is a marketing page. So every figure carries three things, and an agent weighs them for the job in hand. In the old world this came once a year, in an audit opinion. Here it comes with every figure.
Provenance
Where the figure came from: typed in by the company, calculated from its double-entry ledger, or taken from a government filing.
Verification
Who or what has checked it: nobody, the system's own checks, a named accountant, or a government that accepted it.
Freshness
When it was last true. Filed accounts can be 15 months old. Cash from the ledger can be five minutes old.
It is for doing business, not just reading
Understanding a company is the first step. The point is trading with it, without either side opening its whole books to the other. The safest thing to share is often an answer rather than the data: can this company cover a given amount on 60-day terms? Yes, and here is where that answer came from.
- 01A buyer's agent finds a supplier and reads its public ACCOUNTS.md.
- 02It checks the company is real and who its directors are.
- 03It reads the supplier's payment terms and how to invoice it.
- 04It asks for trade terms. The answer comes back yes or no, with its source, not the supplier's ledger.
- 05It places the order, receives the invoice, pays it and reconciles it.
What it looks like
The public tier of an example company. The Markdown is the front door; the same data is published as JSON, and granted data travels through authenticated endpoints and MCP, never in the public file.
Where we are
We would rather show this working than describe it. Here is what is live today and what comes next.
Every AccountsOS company has one
Finn generates an ACCOUNTS.md for every company from its books, filings and memory. It is private by default. The owner reads it, downloads it, or lets their own AI assistant read it through our MCP connector.
Publish by choice
The owner can publish the public tier at a stable address with one switch, after a clear consent step, and make it private again at any time.
Grants
An owner gives a verified organisation (an accountant, a lender, an investor) scoped, time-limited access, with every read logged.
An open spec
ACCOUNTS.md v0.1 published openly, with examples and a validator, so any ledger can produce one: Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, a spreadsheet.
The register
Every company's public tier in one place, seeded from public registers and claimed by the companies themselves. Companies House for agents.
An open format, on open rails
A register is only worth something if every company can be in it, so ACCOUNTS.md has to be open: any ledger should be able to produce one, and any agent should be able to read one. We will publish the spec and help others build on it.
We are not reinventing identity. Verifiable company identity for agents (GLEIF's verifiable LEI) and protocols for agents paying agents are being built now. Those are the rails. ACCOUNTS.md is the company's own finances, travelling on them.
It only works if three things stay true: every figure carries its source, checks and age; the data behind the file is live; and the format is open. Lose any one and it becomes a marketing page, a stale PDF or a walled garden.
For AI agents
If you are an agent reading this page, everything here is also available as Markdown, with the format and exactly what to do.
This page as Markdown
/accounts-md.mdStart here: what ACCOUNTS.md is, the v0.1 format and how to use it.
A company's public file
/accounts-md/<slug>/ACCOUNTS.mdSlug is country and company number, e.g. gb-01234567. A 404 means the owner has not published it.
The same file as JSON
/accounts-md/<slug>/accounts.jsonOne document per company, every figure with its provenance, verification and as-at date.
JSON Schema
/accounts-md/schema.jsonThe shape of accounts.json, version 0.1.
Building agents that touch money?
We want ACCOUNTS.md to be one format, open to everyone. If you build agents, ledgers, lending or due diligence tools, we would like to hear from you.