ChatGPT Agent: what it is, who runs it, and how to allow or block it

ChatGPT Agent is a crawler run by OpenAI. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it. Its name in robots.txt, how it shows up in server logs, whether its identity can be checked, and how to allow or refuse it on each platform.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/chatgpt-agent with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

What ChatGPT Agent is

ChatGPT Agent is a crawler run by OpenAI. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it.

Should you refuse it?

ChatGPT Agent fetches a page because a person asked about it. Refusing it means the answer that person gets is written without your page.

robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Is a request really ChatGPT Agent?

OpenAI publishes the addresses its crawlers fetch from. Citable checks the connecting address of every read that claims to be ChatGPT Agent against those lists: inside them the read is recorded as verified, outside them as unverified.

Allowing or refusing ChatGPT Agent in robots.txt

Add a group under its name, “User-agent: ChatGPT Agent”. “Allow: /” lets it read the site and “Disallow: /” refuses it.

A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

The robots.txt standard (RFC 9309) defines a crawler’s name as letters, hyphens and underscores. “ChatGPT Agent” contains a space, so how a rule under it is matched is up to the crawler.

Refuse ChatGPT Agent:

User-agent: ChatGPT Agent
Disallow: /

Allow ChatGPT Agent:

User-agent: ChatGPT Agent
Allow: /

Where the rule for ChatGPT Agent goes, platform by platform

Also run by OpenAI

Questions

What is ChatGPT Agent?

ChatGPT Agent is a crawler run by OpenAI. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it.

Who runs ChatGPT Agent?

OpenAI. It also reads websites as OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, GPTBot, Operator; each has its own name in robots.txt and can be allowed or refused separately.

How do I allow or block ChatGPT Agent in robots.txt?

Add a group under its name, “User-agent: ChatGPT Agent”. “Allow: /” lets it read the site and “Disallow: /” refuses it. A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

Should I block ChatGPT Agent?

ChatGPT Agent fetches a page because a person asked about it. Refusing it means the answer that person gets is written without your page.

How do I see ChatGPT Agent in my server logs?

In an access log ChatGPT Agent appears as a user agent containing “ChatGPT Agent”.

How do I know a request is really ChatGPT Agent?

OpenAI publishes the addresses its crawlers fetch from. Citable checks the connecting address of every read that claims to be ChatGPT Agent against those lists: inside them the read is recorded as verified, outside them as unverified.

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt


Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/chatgpt-agent · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com