Vercel Firewall now splits AI crawlers from AI assistants, letting sites block training fetches while answering user queries

Site operators can now set separate actions for two kinds of automated access: AI crawlers that collect content for indexing and model training, and AI assistants that fetch pages in response to user actions or search queries. Previously the two request types were not split into separately actionable categories, so sites handled them as a single bot-traffic class when logging or blocking. Vercel's example configuration blocks AI crawlers while allowing AI assistants to retrieve content for answering user questions, with both actions set inside the same AI Bots ruleset.

The controls sit under a project's Security > Firewall > Rules, where enabling AI Bots under Bot Management lets an operator choose an action for AI crawlers and for AI assistants, then review and publish. The same settings can be changed through the Vercel CLI by editing the ai-bots ruleset with the ai-crawlers or ai-assistants category and an action. The command-line flow edits the rule, reviews changes with vercel firewall diff, and applies them with vercel firewall publish; the ruleset is available on all plans.

The capability targets site operators running projects on Vercel, configured through the firewall rules interface or the Vercel CLI, and the ruleset is available on all plans.

Vercel says the ruleset is updated as new bots are added, but does not list which specific bots are currently covered or give classification accuracy or misclassification behavior.