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DOCUMENT 01 / 12 • Identity

AI crawler identity: claims and evidence

How to interpret a crawler name without mistaking a declared identity for proof.

A User-Agent is a claim supplied by the visiting client. A script can copy the name of an AI crawler, so a recognizable name alone does not establish who operated the request. The observatory keeps declared families and classification evidence as separate fields.

The existing classifier compares addresses with its configured ranges transiently. Those ranges can age, and shared infrastructure can weaken attribution. Treat the labels as evidence from a configured classifier, not independent proof of an operator or model.