The Web is evolving from a medium that humans browse to an environment where software agents act on behalf of users. Advances in large language models (LLMs) make natural language a practical interface for goal-directed tasks, yet most current web agents operate on low-level primitives such as clicks and keystrokes. These operations are brittle, inefficient, and difficult to verify. Complementing content-oriented efforts such as NLWeb's semantic layer for retrieval, we argue that the agentic web also requires a semantic layer for web actions. We propose \textbf{Web Verbs}, a web-scale set of typed, semantically documented functions that expose site capabilities through a uniform interface, whether implemented through APIs or robust client-side workflows. These verbs serve as stable and composable units that agents can discover, select, and synthesize into concise programs. This abstraction unifies API-based and browser-based paradigms, enabling LLMs to synthesize reliable and auditable workflows with explicit control and data flow. Verbs can carry preconditions, postconditions, policy tags, and logging support, which improves \textbf{reliability} by providing stable interfaces, \textbf{efficiency} by reducing dozens of steps into a few function calls, and \textbf{verifiability} through typed contracts and checkable traces. We present our vision, a proof-of-concept implementation, and representative case studies that demonstrate concise and robust execution compared to existing agents. Finally, we outline a roadmap for standardization to make verbs deployable and trustworthy at web scale.

翻译：网络正从人类浏览的媒介演变为软件代理代表用户执行任务的环境。大型语言模型（LLM）的进展使自然语言成为目标导向任务的实用接口，然而当前大多数网络代理仍基于点击和按键等底层原语进行操作。这些操作脆弱、低效且难以验证。在补充诸如NLWeb面向检索的语义层等内容导向工作的基础上，我们认为智能网络同样需要面向网络行为的语义层。我们提出**Web Verbs**——一套网络规模、类型化且语义化文档化的函数集合，通过统一接口暴露网站能力，无论其通过API还是鲁棒的客户端工作流实现。这些动词作为稳定且可组合的单元，可供代理发现、选择并合成为简洁的程序。该抽象统一了基于API和基于浏览器的范式，使LLM能够合成具有显式控制流与数据流的可靠且可审计的工作流。动词可携带前置条件、后置条件、策略标签和日志支持，从而通过提供稳定接口提升**可靠性**，通过将数十个步骤简化为少量函数调用提升**效率**，并通过类型化契约与可检查的追踪提升**可验证性**。我们阐述了愿景框架，展示了概念验证实现及代表性案例研究，证明其相较于现有代理能够实现更简洁鲁棒的执行。最后，我们提出了标准化路线图，以使动词能在网络规模上可部署且可信赖。