ADN classifies machine visitors by observed intent, not by whether they hold a credential. Nine classes cover the traffic patterns we see across customer sites.
The nine classes
| Class | Examples | Response shape |
|---|---|---|
| bulk_training | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot | Bulk corpus export + delta feed |
| answer_engine | OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot | Clean Markdown or DocLang + JSON-LD |
| live_fetch | ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User | Fastest path, never rate-limited |
| agentic_browser | Operator, computer-use browsers | In-page affordances + Markdown |
| developer_agent | Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot | MCP tools + llms.txt |
| custom_framework | LangChain, curl, Scrapy | Content negotiation + /index.md or .dclg |
| commercial_scraper | Bright Data, Apify, price bots | Metered access after free tier |
| legacy_seo_social | Googlebot, facebookexternalhit | Passthrough untouched |
| abusive | Credential stuffing, loop bots | 403 with machine-readable reason |
Five response shapes
Intent decides the payload; identity tier moves the rate limit:
1. Passthrough — Your origin response, unchanged. Reserved for search engines and social unfurlers.
2. Markdown or DocLang page — Clean content without nav chrome. Markdown for lightweight delivery; DocLang (.dclg) for explicit structure. Fast ETags for repeat fetches.
3. Bulk corpus — One export instead of thousands of page walks.
4. MCP tools — Structured tools for IDE agents to query docs and APIs.
5. Blocked — Machine-readable denial for abusive traffic.
Cross-cutting rules
• Graceful degradation — Full content → summary → sample + terms → 429 → 403. Never a hard wall for cooperative visitors.
• Behaviour is a signal — Rate, path diversity, robots.txt honouring, and 304 respect all inform classification.
• Hard safety rule — Never serve Markdown to Googlebot or Open Graph unfurlers. Ever.
Identity upgrades limits, not access
Tier 0 (anonymous) still gets a correct, useful response via content negotiation. Higher identity tiers — declared UA, network-verified IP, self-registered API key, cryptographic Web Bot Auth — buy higher limits and richer payloads, never basic service.