Affordances
In UX, an affordance is a property of an object that indicates how it can be used — a button affords clicking, a slider affords dragging.
In AX, affordances are declared capabilities. An AXAG-annotated element declares what operations it affords to agents through its axag-intent and axag-action-type attributes.
Visual vs Semantic Affordances
| Visual Affordance | Semantic Affordance |
|---|---|
| A button shape suggests "clickable" | axag-action-type="write" declares "invocable operation" |
| A text field suggests "typeable" | axag-parameter-type="string" declares "accepts text input" |
| A dropdown suggests "selectable" | axag-parameter-enum='["draft","published"]' declares "accepts one of these values" |
Agent-Facing Affordances
For agents, affordances MUST be:
- Explicit — Declared through annotations, not inferred from appearance
- Typed — Carrying parameter type information
- Scoped — Bounded by declared context
- Constrained — Governed by declared validation rules