gregrandall

AI agents, LLMs, and crawlers have to wade through navigation bars, sidebars, ads, and comment forms to reach the content they want, and every element costs tokens. <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare measured</a> an 80% reduction in token usage when converting a blog post from HTML to Markdown (16,180 tokens down to 3,150).
Botkibble adds a Markdown endpoint to every published post and page.
Cloudflare offers <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Markdown for Agents</a> at the CDN edge on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. Botkibble does the same thing (for free) at the origin, so it works on any host.
<a href="https://github.com/greg-randall/botkibble" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub Repository</a>
Three ways to request Markdown:
<ul>
<li><code>.md</code> suffix: append <code>.md</code> to any post or page URL (e.g. <code>example.com/my-post.md</code>)</li>
<li>Query parameter: add <code>?format=markdown</code> to any post or page URL</li>
<li>Content negotiation: send <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> in the request header</li>
</ul>
What’s in every response:
<ul>
<li>Structured metadata header with title, date, categories, tags, word count, character count, and estimated token count (in YAML frontmatter format, readable by any AI agent)</li>
<li>Clean Markdown converted from fully-rendered post HTML (shortcodes run, filters applied)</li>
<li><code>Content-Type: text/markdown</code> and <code>Vary: Accept</code> response headers</li>
<li><code>Content-Signal</code> header for AI signal declaration — defaults to <code>ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=yes</code> — see <a href="https://contentsignals.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">contentsignals.org</a></li>
<li><code>X-Markdown-Tokens</code> header with estimated token count</li>
<li>Discovery via <code><link rel="alternate"></code> in the HTML head and <code>Link</code> HTTP header</li>
<li>Automatic cache invalidation when a post is updated or deleted</li>
</ul>
Performance:
Botkibble writes Markdown to disk on the first request, then serves it as a static file. A built-in Fast-Path serves cached files during WordPress’s <code>init</code> hook, before the main database query runs. No extra configuration needed.
Add a web server rewrite rule and Botkibble bypasses PHP entirely, serving <code>.md</code> files the same way a server would serve an image or CSS file:
 Method 
 Avg. response time
 Standard HTML 
 0.97s
 Markdown (cold, first request) 
 0.95s
 Markdown (cached, PHP Fast-Path) 
 0.87s
 Markdown (Nginx/Apache direct) 
 0.11s
Serving directly from disk is 88% faster than a full WordPress page load. See the Performance section below for Nginx and Apache configuration.
Security:
<ul>
<li>Drafts, private posts, and password-protected content return <code>403 Forbidden</code></li>
<li>Rate limits cache-miss regenerations (20/min by default) to mitigate DoS abuse</li>
<li><code>X-Robots-Tag: noindex</code> keeps Markdown versions out of search results</li>
<li><code>Link: rel="canonical"</code> points search engines back to the HTML version</li>
</ul>
Cache variants (optional):
You can persist alternate cached representations by adding <code>?botkibble_variant=slim</code> (or any other variant name). 
Variant caches are stored under:
<pre><code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/<variant>/<slug>.md
</code></pre>
What it does NOT do:
<ul>
<li>Expose drafts, private posts, or password-protected content</li>
<li>Serve non-post/page content types by default</li>
<li>Require any configuration. Activate and it works.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why Markdown?</h3>
HTML is expensive for AI systems to process. <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare measured</a> an 80% reduction in token usage when converting a blog post from HTML to Markdown (16,180 tokens down to 3,150).
Cloudflare now offers <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Markdown for Agents</a> at the CDN edge via the <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header, available on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.
This plugin does the same thing at the origin, so it works on any host. It also adds <code>.md</code> suffix URLs, <code>?format=markdown</code> query parameters, YAML frontmatter, static file caching, and server-level offloading.
If you use Cloudflare, both share the same <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header, <code>Content-Signal</code> headers, and <code>X-Markdown-Tokens</code> response headers.
Cloudflare currently defaults to <code>Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes</code> with no way to change it. Botkibble defaults to <code>ai-train=no</code> and lets you override the full signal per site via the <code>botkibble_content_signal</code> filter.
<h3>Performance & Static Offloading</h3>
This plugin supports static file offloading by writing Markdown content to <code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/</code>.
<h3>Nginx Configuration</h3>
To bypass PHP entirely and have Nginx serve the files (including variants) directly:
<pre><code># Variants
location ~* ^/(_v/[^/]+/.+)\.md$ {
 default_type text/markdown;
 try_files /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md /index.php?$args;
}

# Default
location ~* ^/(.+)\.md$ {
 default_type text/markdown;
 try_files /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md /index.php?$args;
}
</code></pre>
<h3>Apache (.htaccess)</h3>
Add this to your <code>.htaccess</code> before the WordPress rules:
<pre><code>RewriteEngine On
# Variants
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/$1/$2.md -f
RewriteRule ^_v/([^/]+)/(.+)\.md$ /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/$1/$2.md [L,T=text/markdown]

# Default
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.md$ /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md [L,T=text/markdown]
</code></pre>
Even without these rules, the plugin uses a “Fast-Path” that serves cached files from PHP before the main database query is executed.
<h3>Credits</h3>
We thank Cristi Constantin (https://github.com/cristi-constantin) for contributing cache variants, URL and SEO improvements, and fixing important bugs.

Botkibble

Serves every published post and page as Markdown for AI agents and crawlers. No configuration, no API keys. Activate and it works.

gavindarkvisitors

Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors.
<h3>Track, control, and optimize your website for AI agents and bots</h3>
You have <a href="https://knownagents.com/insights" rel="nofollow ugc">40% more visitors than you think</a>. Protect your content from unwanted AI scraping and crawling, and turn the rising wave of AI agents, LLM assistants, and other bots crawling your website into a new growth channel for your business. For full details, visit the <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Known Agents</a> website.
<h3>1. Agent Analytics</h3>
Get realtime insight into the hidden ecosystem of crawlers, scrapers, and AI agents browsing your website.
<ul>
<li>Monitor traffic from crawlers and scrapers: Track the hidden activity of <a href="https://knownagents.com/agents" rel="nofollow ugc">all known artificial agents</a> visiting your website in real time.</li>
<li>Analyze how AI agents browse your website: Review sessions from AI models autonomously navigating and interacting with your website. Optimize their experience to increase conversions and human referrals.</li>
<li>Detect bots spoofing legitimate agents: Identify bad actors and unauthorized scrapers pretending to be legitimate agents like Googlebot or Bingbot.</li>
<li>Get alerted to bot traffic spikes: Stay informed when an agent’s traffic starts surging or overloading your server.</li>
<li>See which agents visit most frequently and which pages they target: Break down bot traffic by agent and URL to understand where crawlers and scrapers are focused.</li>
<li>Export reports to CSV: Download agent activity reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>2. LLM Referral Tracking</h3>
Measure human conversions from AI chat and search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and more.
<ul>
<li>Find out which AI platforms are sending you traffic: See which LLMs are recommending your website and measure how many humans click through to visit.</li>
<li>Export reports to CSV: Download LLM referral reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. Automatic Robots.txt</h3>
Protect IP, reduce server cost, and save time by serving a robots.txt that updates continuously.
<ul>
<li>Block crawlers and scrapers by category: Control access for entire agent categories including AI crawlers, scrapers, SEO bots, and more. One selection covers every current and future agent in that group.</li>
<li>Stop tracking new bots manually: Your robots.txt is updated as new agents emerge, so you never have to manage them yourself or make manual edits.</li>
<li>Enforce robots.txt rules with the WordPress plugin: The WordPress plugin detects and blocks bots that ignore your robots.txt rules, protecting your content from unauthorized access.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Demos</h3>
Demos can be found on the <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">home page</a>.
<h3>Further Details</h3>
This plugin connects your website to <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Known Agents</a>. It uses the Known Agents API to connect to your account and provide functionality.
By signing up, you agree to the <a href="https://knownagents.com/terms-of-service" rel="nofollow ugc">Terms of Service</a> and <a href="https://knownagents.com/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow ugc">Privacy Policy</a>.
Are you finding this plugin useful? Please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/#new-post" rel="ugc">leave us a ★★★★★ review</a>! Otherwise, please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/" rel="ugc">ask us for help</a>.

Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic


Please remind me in a month to provide an update on the performance of this plugin on a heavily visited website.


Begun my review...


An easy improvement would be to link to the settings page from the plugin entry like other plugins, other than that, in general this plugin and its online dashboard is generally well thought out and useful. My website is small and has limited resources that get overrun by crawlers making it unavailable. This plugin helps identify the culprits and decide if I should block them or not. For free you can block them in robots.txt, as I have a physical file, the plugin won't touch that but its easy to add manually. It will report those crawlers that ignore the robots file and the paid version will enforce those rules, but I just update ".htaccess" myself.



I'm reducing my rating by a star since you won't get much "Agent Analytics" (per month) and for my tiny site it quickly ran out, we are a NFP so don't have money to burn on subscriptions.  The the description for the plan incorrectly states "Unlimited Agent Analytics" when the plan only includes 100,000 events.


Very Useful Plugin


Very good: shows all bot-crawlers.Our website was sometimes down due to bot-crawlers, with this tool it is easy to solve. Very good logging of bots.This was the only good plugin I could find for this purpose.Some bots ignore robots.txt. So I manually changed htaccess, that worked very good.


Very very helpful

Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors.

Botkibble vs Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic