hammadtq

OpenBotAuth helps publishers control automated access from AI crawlers and agents. It verifies requests using RFC 9421 HTTP Message Signatures (via a configurable verifier) and applies per-site or per-post policies like allow, deny, teaser previews, and 402 payment-required responses. It also publishes AI-friendly endpoints like llms.txt, a JSON feed, and per-post Markdown.
Instead of blocking all bots or allowing unrestricted access, you can:
<ul>
<li>See AI bot traffic – Local-only analytics showing which bots are crawling your site</li>
<li>Verify bot identity using cryptographic signatures (RFC 9421)</li>
<li>Show teasers to unverified bots (first N words)</li>
<li>Rate limit bot access per agent</li>
<li>Whitelist/blacklist specific bots</li>
</ul>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Bot Traffic Analytics – See which AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) are visiting your site</li>
<li>Signature Verification – Verifies RFC 9421 HTTP Message Signatures using Ed25519 cryptography</li>
<li>Content Teasers – Show first N words to unverified bots with customizable per-post settings</li>
<li>Rate Limiting – Per-agent rate limits with configurable time windows</li>
<li>Access Control – Whitelist/blacklist with wildcard pattern matching</li>
<li>Local Analytics – Visual dashboard with charts, stats cards, and decision breakdowns (no external tracking)</li>
<li>AI-Ready Endpoints – Serve llms.txt, JSON feed, and markdown for AI crawlers</li>
<li>Tabbed Admin Interface – Clean organization with Analytics, AI Endpoints, and Configuration tabs</li>
</ul>
<h4>AI-Ready Endpoints</h4>
OpenBotAuth provides machine-readable endpoints for AI systems:
<ul>
<li>/llms.txt – Standardized AI feed discovery (also at /.well-known/llms.txt)</li>
<li>/.well-known/openbotauth-feed.json – JSON list of all published posts</li>
<li>/.well-known/openbotauth/posts/{ID}.md – Per-post markdown content</li>
</ul>
Configure which post types to include (posts, pages, or custom types) and set the feed limit (up to 500 items). All data is served locally from your WordPress database. No external tracking or telemetry. Only published, non-password-protected posts are exposed.
<h4>How It Works</h4>
<ol>
<li>AI agent signs HTTP request with its private key (RFC 9421 signature)</li>
<li>WordPress plugin extracts signature headers and sends them to a verifier service</li>
<li>Verifier fetches agent’s public key from registry and verifies signature</li>
<li>Plugin applies policy: allow full content, show teaser, require payment, or deny</li>
</ol>
<h4>External Service Disclosure</h4>
This plugin connects to an external verifier service. When a signed bot request is received, the plugin sends the following data to your configured verifier URL via <code>wp_remote_post</code>:
<ul>
<li>HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.)</li>
<li>The accessed URL (including query string, if present)</li>
<li>HTTP signature headers (Signature, Signature-Input, Signature-Agent)</li>
<li>Additional HTTP header values explicitly listed in the Signature-Input header (e.g., content-type, accept, user-agent)</li>
</ul>
Privacy protection: Sensitive headers (cookies, authorization, proxy-authorization, www-authenticate) are NEVER forwarded, even if present in the request. If a bot’s signature covers a sensitive header, verification will fail with a clear error.
No WordPress user accounts or personal data is transmitted. Only the headers explicitly covered by the bot’s signature are forwarded to enable cryptographic verification. Note that the URL may include query parameters depending on your site’s structure.
You can: 
* Use the hosted verifier at <code>https://verifier.openbotauth.org/verify</code> 
* Self-host the verifier service (see documentation) 
* The verifier service may log requests server-side depending on your configuration
Analytics are local-only. Decision counts (allow/teaser/deny/pay/rate_limit) and bot traffic observations (User-Agent based) are stored in your WordPress database. No analytics data is sent to external servers.
For more information, please review our <a href="https://openbotauth.org/terms" rel="nofollow ugc">Terms of Service</a> and <a href="https://openbotauth.org/privacy" rel="nofollow ugc">Privacy Policy</a>.
<h3>Developer Hooks</h3>
<h4>Filters</h4>
openbotauth_policy 
Modify policy before applying:
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_policy', function($policy, $post) {
 if ($post->post_type === 'premium') {
 $policy['price_cents'] = 1000;
 }
 return $policy;
}, 10, 2);
</code></pre>
<h4>Actions</h4>
openbotauth_verified 
Triggered when a bot is verified:
<pre><code>add_action('openbotauth_verified', function($agent, $post) {
 error_log("Bot {$agent['jwks_url']} accessed post {$post->ID}");
}, 10, 2);
</code></pre>
openbotauth_payment_required 
Triggered when 402 is returned:
<pre><code>add_action('openbotauth_payment_required', function($agent, $post, $price) {
 // Track payment requests
}, 10, 3);
</code></pre>
<h4>AI Endpoint Filters (v0.1.2+)</h4>
openbotauth_should_serve_llms_txt 
Disable llms.txt endpoint (e.g., when using Yoast):
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_should_serve_llms_txt', '__return_false');
</code></pre>
openbotauth_should_serve_feed 
Disable JSON feed endpoint:
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_should_serve_feed', '__return_false');
</code></pre>
openbotauth_should_serve_markdown 
Disable markdown endpoints:
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_should_serve_markdown', '__return_false');
</code></pre>
openbotauth_feed_item 
Modify feed items:
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_feed_item', function($item, $post) {
 $item['custom_field'] = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'my_field', true);
 return $item;
}, 10, 2);
</code></pre>
openbotauth_markdown_content 
Post-process markdown output:
<pre><code>add_filter('openbotauth_markdown_content', function($markdown, $post) {
 return $markdown . "\n\n---\nCopyright notice here";
}, 10, 2);
</code></pre>

OpenBotAuth – AI Crawler Access Control

Verify AI crawlers with HTTP Signatures and enforce allow/deny/teaser policies; also serves llms.txt and AI-ready feeds.

Saskia Teichmann

AI is changing how people find your website. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews are replacing traditional search for millions of users. If AI can’t find your content, you’re invisible to a growing audience.
citelayer® makes your WordPress site visible to AI — instantly. No coding, no configuration. Install, activate, done.
<h4>🤖 AI Bot Analytics — Know Who’s Crawling Your Site</h4>
NEW in 1.4.0: Track visitors arriving from AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. See which AI platforms send real users to your site — plus track every AI bot visit in real-time.
<ul>
<li>62 AI/LLM Bots Tracked — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, DeepSeekBot, xAI-Bot, Meta-ExternalAgent, and 55 more</li>
<li>Real-Time Dashboard — Stat cards (7d/30d/90d/all-time), 30-day SVG trend chart, top bots leaderboard</li>
<li>AI Blind Spots — Discover pages invisible to AI bots with AI Discovery Score (0-100). Find and fix content gaps</li>
<li>Crawler Logs — Full log with filtering by bot, URL path, and date range. Paginated for large datasets</li>
<li>CSV Export — Download your bot data for offline analysis</li>
<li>Cache Plugin Detection — Auto-detects WP Rocket, LiteSpeed, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache. Provides setup guides to exclude AI bots from caching</li>
<li>90-Day Auto-Cleanup — Keeps your database lean. No bloat, no maintenance</li>
<li>100% Local — All data stored in your WordPress database. No external accounts, no API calls</li>
</ul>
<h4>🔍 Get Found by AI Search Engines</h4>
Your site gets an llms.txt file — a new standard that tells AI crawlers what your site is about, what content you publish, and what products you sell. Think of it as robots.txt, but for AI.
<h4>📊 Speak AI’s Language with Schema.org</h4>
Automatically generates structured data (JSON-LD) that AI agents actually understand — your organization info, articles, products, and more. Better structured data = better AI recommendations.
<h4>📄 Serve Clean Content to AI Agents</h4>
When ChatGPT or Perplexity visit your page, citelayer® serves an optimized Markdown version instead of messy HTML. This uses 80% fewer tokens and gives AI a crystal-clear picture of your content.
<h4>🛡️ Stay in Control of Your Content</h4>
Configure how AI systems may use your content — allow or deny training, search indexing, and RAG/context usage. Your content, your rules.
<h4>🛒 Works with WooCommerce</h4>
If you run a shop, citelayer® makes your products visible to AI:
<ul>
<li>Product data automatically included in llms.txt</li>
<li>Product Schema.org markup generated</li>
<li>Product pages served as structured Markdown tables</li>
<li>AI agents can discover your shop via UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)</li>
</ul>
<h4>📈 Why AI Visibility Matters Now</h4>
<ul>
<li>58% of online searches will involve AI by the end of 2026</li>
<li>Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) are the next evolution of SEO</li>
<li>Sites without AI-readable content are invisible to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and AI Overviews</li>
<li>citelayer® is the easiest way to make your WordPress site AI-ready</li>
</ul>
<h4>✅ Free vs. Premium</h4>
The free plugin covers everything you need to get started:
✅ llms.txt generation 
✅ Schema.org markup (Organization, WebSite, Article, Product) 
✅ Markdown for AI agents 
✅ Content-Signal headers 
✅ WooCommerce product discovery 
✅ AI Bot Analytics (62 bots, dashboard, AI Blind Spots, CSV export) 
✅ AI Referral Tracking (Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot) 
✅ AI Readiness Scanner 
✅ Cache plugin detection & setup guides
Premium adds:
🚀 Full UCP product browsing, cart & checkout for AI agents 
📈 AI Visibility Monitoring Dashboard 
🔧 Advanced Schema.org (Reviews, FAQ, Shipping) 
🛒 Product feed optimization
<a href="https://citelayer.ai/premium/" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more about Premium →</a>
Get your AI Audit 
citelayer® offers thorough AI Visibility Audits as a Service. 
<a href="https://citelayer-ai.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">We help you become visible</a>

citelayer® – AI SEO & Visibility | llms.txt, Bot Analytics, Schema.org

Get found by ChatGPT, Perplexity & AI search. AI Visibility, llms.txt, Schema.org — make your site the answer AI recommends.

OpenBotAuth – AI Crawler Access Control vs citelayer® – AI SEO & Visibility | llms.txt, Bot Analytics, Schema.org