gnu.org: what it tells AI crawlers

On 28 October 2026, gnu.org's robots.txt allowed all of GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and CCBot.

Last verified 2026-10-29 03:59 UTC (daily run of 2026-10-28). Proof for that day.

Panel

top 1k (Tranco)

robots.txt

ok (HTTP 200) · https://www.gnu.org/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha256 0e4faeb5a566b55b… · view as recorded

The * group

allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-28

Other signals

robots.txt as recorded sha256 8e94ad178c2cb27f…

# robots.txt for http://www.gnu.org/

User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 2
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /savannah-checkouts/
Disallow: /server/trans-map.html

# RT #1298215.
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 4
Disallow: /server/trans-map.html

# RT #1298215.
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 4
Disallow: /server/select-language.html

# RT #1638325.
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 4
Disallow: */CVS/
Disallow: */po/
Disallow: /prep/gnumaint/
Disallow: /prep/wrappers-and-scripts/
Disallow: /proprietary/workshop/
Disallow: /screenshots/
Disallow: /server/banners/
Disallow: /server/gnun/
Disallow: /server/source/
Disallow: /server/staging/
Disallow: /server/body-include*
Disallow: /server/bottom-notes*
Disallow: /server/footer*
Disallow: /server/fs-gang*
Disallow: /server/generic*
Disallow: /server/header*
Disallow: /server/head-include*
Disallow: /server/html5-header*
Disallow: /server/html5-head-include*
Disallow: /server/include-file-list*
Disallow: /server/outdated*
Disallow: /server/top-addendum*
Disallow: /software/gnun/linc/
Disallow: /software/gnun/proofread/
Disallow: /software/gnun/reports/
Disallow: /software/gnun/test/

Sitemap: http://www.gnu.org/sitemap.xml

robots.txt versions

Timeline of changes

Reconstructed history (Common Crawl)

From Common Crawl's robots.txt captures: what CCBot was served, one crawl per quarter. A separate series from the daily observations above; a 403 here means Common Crawl was refused, not this ledger.

Evidence

Every daily observation of gnu.org is a leaf in that day's Merkle tree. Proof of the robots.txt line for 2026-10-28: audit path (JSON), day root and OpenTimestamps proof (complete (bitcoin block 973640)).

API: https://infrarabbit.com/crawlers/api/v1/policy/gnu.org