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Show HN: Telltale Bot, detecting agentic web traffic

Telltale Bot launched as a bot and AI-agent detection tool that classifies website visitors as Human, Agentic or Bot and pushes the verdict into a site's dataLayer for use in GA4, Google Tag Manager and other analytics tools, starting at $20 a month. The tool's detection model draws on more than 50 signals, including browser configuration, behavior and connection data, and names known agents such as Claude in Chrome, ChatGPT agent, Grok and Meta Muse when it can identify them; Telltale Bot states that automated traffic passed human traffic for the first time in May 2026, according to Cloudflare. Telltale Bot does not block or challenge visitors, leaving teams to segment bots and agents out of ad audiences and conversions, review click fraud and flag account sharing, with add-ons free during the beta.

read5 min views2 publishedNov 12, 2026
Show HN: Telltale Bot, detecting agentic web traffic
Image: source
  • HUMAN
  • AGENTIC
  • BOT

Find out which visitors are people, AI agents, or bots. Use the answer in GA4, GTM, or any analytics tool. One tag, from $20 a month.

In May 2026, automated traffic passed human traffic for the first time (according to Cloudflare), and it has only increased since. Filtering out all bot traffic might mean missing two-thirds of your site's usage.

Some bots are bad and should be blocked, but some are very important. AI agents are something new: software doing a task for one real person, who may be your customer.

What your analytics sees Who it really was, as Telltale Bot sees it
Chrome · Windows Claude in ChromeAgentic
Chrome · Linux Meta MuseAgentic
Chrome · macOS ChatGPT agentAgentic
Chrome · Linux GrokAgentic
Chrome · Windows PuppeteerBot
Chrome · Windows Automated Browser (from a scraping farm) Bot
Safari · iPhone A personHuman

Three verdicts #

Human

A person, using their own browser.

Agentic

An AI agent acting for one person, on a task that person asked for. Named when we can tell which one.

Bot

Crawlers, scrapers, headless browsers and other automation running on its own.

What it's for

We identify. You decide. #

Telltale Bot is bot and AI agent detection for analytics and marketing teams. It doesn't block or challenge anyone: nobody gets a CAPTCHA, and nothing breaks for a person we got wrong. What you do with the verdict is up to you.

Cleaner numbers

Segment or filter bots and agents in GA4 and your other tools, and keep them out of ad audiences and conversions. The visitor's network (ISP, VPN or proxy, location by IP) can come with the verdict too, with no separate IP lookup service to pay for.

Click fraud review

Every paid click and UTM landing, judged by who the visitor turned out to be: bots by ad platform and campaign, repeat clickers, and click IDs that came back from more than one visitor.

Account sharing and automation

For sites with logins: members whose accounts are driven by bots or agents, and accounts used on several devices on different networks at once, with the details your support team needs to make the case.

Add-ons are free while we're in beta. Pricing

How it works

One tag is the whole install. #

  1. 1Paste it in Directly in your pages or through a tag manager. No server software to install and no proxy in front of your site. You can also run it from a hostname on your own domain.
  2. 2We check every browser visit Our script looks at the browser and how it is being used, and our server adds what it sees of the connection. Visitors that never run JavaScript, such as most crawlers, are out of its reach.
  3. 3Use the verdict It arrives on the page within a moment, in yourdataLayer , where GA4, Google Tag Manager and your ad tags can use it. Every visit also shows up in your reports.
{
  "event": "telltale.verdict",
  "telltale": {
    "actor": "agentic",
    "agentId": "claude-app",
    "confidence": "high",
    "declared": true
  }
}

That is the default: the verdict with the agent ID and confidence. You can add the agent's name, the visitor's ISP and connection type, VPN or proxy, location by IP, and browser and device.

Bot detection

Bots have learned to look like people. We look closer. #

Many smart bots today claim to be an ordinary Chrome, so the user agent alone misses them. Tools like Google Analytics that rely on User-Agent lists are easily fooled, and frequently out of date. We check the full picture: how the browser is set up, how it behaves and where it's coming from. Our detection model is based on 50+ signals, and generally bases its verdicts on more than one signal.

Headless and driven browsers

Real browsers run by a script, with or without a window.

Playwright · Puppeteer · Selenium

Disguised browsers

Automation that claims to be an ordinary Chrome or Safari.

Stealth plugins · antidetect browsers · spoofed user agents

Scrapers and farms

Many visitors that are really one operation, each looking like a new person.

Scraping proxy services · residential proxies · rotating IPs

Crawlers that say who they are

Named, with who runs them and what they are for.

Googlebot · bingbot · Applebot · AhrefsBot · Meta-ExternalAgent

AI agent detection

AI agents in the browser, in apps and in the cloud. #

An AI agent acts for one person, on a task that person asked for. Whereas a crawler collecting pages for search or AI training is a bot, even when an AI model steers it. By our definition, agentic traffic is only labeled "agentic" when we know that it was coming from an agentic browser.

In the person's own browser

An extension or the browser's own assistant takes over the tab.

In an app's built-in browser

The browser inside an assistant's desktop app.

On the AI company's servers

A cloud browser the assistant drives for the person.

Purpose-built Collects what detection needs and nothing else: no behavioral analytics, no profiles, no ad tracking.

What we collect.

No cookies Nothing kept on the device after the tab closes.

Complex evidence, simple verdicts Bots and AI agents change daily, but what you get stays simple: a clear verdict and network intelligence.

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