# Nine intent classes for machine traffic — ADN — ADN

← Back to Learn 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.
 Frequently asked
 Why nine classes instead of allow/block? Allow/block treats every bot the same. Intent classes recognize that a bulk training crawler, a live user-triggered fetch, and a price scraper need different payloads, rate limits, and terms.
 Can I override the default policy? Yes. ADN ships opinionated defaults, and Pro lets you tune per-class rate limits, metering, and response shapes from the dashboard.
 Continue reading
 What is an Agent Delivery Network?
 Googlebot passthrough: the one rule we never break
 Run the free scan on your URL to see what AI receives today.
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