Agent directory · AI training crawler
Meta-ExternalAgent
Meta's crawler for collecting web content that may be used to train its AI models and improve its products.
- Run by
- Meta
- Type
- AI training crawler
- Robots.txt name
meta-externalagent- Verifiable
- No
What Meta-ExternalAgent does
Meta's crawler for collecting web content that may be used to train its AI models and improve its products.
As an AI training crawler, it collects public pages that may be used to train AI models. The kinds of AI agent that visit websites.
Should you allow it?
A real business choice. Lean towards blocking if your content is the product (publishing, research, courses); lean towards allowing if your pages exist to sell something else. A decision guide for blocking or allowing AI crawlers.
How to allow or block Meta-ExternalAgent
Meta-ExternalAgent reads the meta-externalagent group in your robots.txt. To block it everywhere:
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Disallow: /To allow it everywhere, even if another rule blocks other bots:
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Allow: /Robots.txt is a request, not a lock: well-behaved crawlers follow it, impostors don't. Robots.txt for AI agents.
How it identifies itself
A typical user agent:
meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)How to tell if it's really Meta-ExternalAgent
Meta doesn't publish IP ranges or a reverse DNS domain for Meta-ExternalAgent, so a request can't be proven to come from it. Anyone can send its user agent, so treat the name alone as a claim, not proof. Ghost Agent Lab reports these requests as unverified rather than guessing.
Other agents from Meta
- Meta-ExternalFetcher: AI assistant
- facebookexternalhit: other bot
Every Meta agent, and a robots.txt for all of them →
Does Meta-ExternalAgent visit your site? Ghost Agent Lab reads your CDN or server logs and shows every request from Meta-ExternalAgent and 1,566+ other known agents: what they read, what your site sent back, and whether each request was genuine. See agent traffic, or check whether AI agents can use your site for free.