Is that visitor a person or an agent? CrawlProof now lets them say so

CrawlProof's tracker now accepts a self-declared actor token that lets a visitor state whether a visit is a human or an AI agent, with agents able to name the human operator behind them. Each registered actor receives one or more cpa_ tokens sent via a Crawlproof-Actor header or a per-site crp_actor URL parameter, and declared agents are counted as bots in unique visitors while declared humans change nothing; the tracker remains cookieless. CrawlProof reported that a headless scraper on one of its sites appeared as 31,000 "humans" a day from Singapore before being caught by volume, and its own agent, riotcoder, was the first registered agent, with its first beacon arriving through a stock Chrome user agent and landing in bot:declared.

Is that visitor a person or an agent? CrawlProof now lets them say so An AI agent driving a real Chrome looks exactly like a person. Same TLS handshake, same headers, it runs your JavaScript and scrolls. User-agent checks catch the crawlers that announce themselves and nothing else. On one of our sites a headless scraper was showing up as 31,000 "humans" a day from Si An AI agent driving a real Chrome looks exactly like a person. Same TLS handshake, same headers, it runs your JavaScript and scrolls. User-agent checks catch the crawlers that announce themselves and nothing else. On one of our sites a headless scraper was showing up as 31,000 "humans" a day from Singapore before we caught it by volume. Some agents are perfectly happy to say what they are, though. Mine is. So CrawlProof's tracker now accepts a declaration: this visit is a person, or this visit is an agent, and here is who. You register actors on your CrawlProof account: an email and a kind, human or agent. An agent can name the human who runs it. Each actor gets one or more cpa tokens, and the visitor sends the token with its visits: crawlproof actors add anthony@example.com --kind=human crawlproof actors add mybot@example.com --kind=agent --operator=anthony@example.com an agent sets one header on every request Playwright extraHTTPHeaders, Puppeteer Crawlproof-Actor: cpa ... a person opens each site once; the token is kept for that site and stripped from the URL https://example.com/?crp actor=cpa ... The token is the credential. Typing someone's email claims nothing, and an address only shows as verified after a link sent to it is clicked your own login address is verified on the spot . One verified claim per address, across every account. It is the honor system, so the rule is one-way. If a visit says it is an agent, we believe it and count it as a bot, including in unique visitors. Nobody gains anything by pretending to be a bot. If a visit says it is a human, we write that down and change nothing. When the user agent or our scripted-browser cap says bot, it stays a bot, and the actor gets a contradiction on its record. A token with contradictions piling up is a token being used by something it should not be. Names are private to whoever registered them. Other site owners see counts per kind, not who. The tracker stays cookieless. I started with a cookie so one click would declare you on every site, then remembered our docs say "No cookies", so it is a link per site instead. crawlproof stats prints a "Declared self-reported " block when anyone declared, kept apart from the measured numbers. There is also a settings page with a link per tracked site for declaring a browser, MCP tools list actors, add actor, mint actor token and the API under /api/tracker/v1/actors. My agent, riotcoder, is the first registered agent. Its first beacon came in through a stock Chrome user agent and landed in bot:declared, which is the point. Docs: https://crawlproof.com/docs/statistics declared-actors Key Takeaways - •An AI agent driving a real Chrome looks exactly like a person - •This story was reported by Dev.to , covering developments in the dev space. - •AI advancements continue to reshape industries — read the full article on Dev.to for complete coverage. 📖 Continue reading the full article: Read Full Article on Dev.to → https://dev.to/chovy/is-that-visitor-a-person-or-an-agent-crawlproof-now-lets-them-say-so-1co1