Fetches individual links at a user's request, supporting product functions such as agentic AI features.
Source: developers.facebook.comOperator
Meta
Job
User-triggered fetch
Visits a page because a person asked a question that needs it. This is the visit that can end in a citation.
robots.txt
May ignore robots.txt on user requests
Meta says this fetcher may bypass robots.txt because the fetch was requested by a user.
Source: developers.facebook.commeta-externalfetcher/1.1
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain.
A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it (RFC 9309), so a named group does not inherit the rules under User-agent: *. Repeat any paths you keep private, as the example does with /admin/.
User-agent: meta-externalfetcher Allow: / Disallow: /admin/
User-agent: meta-externalfetcher Disallow: /
Meta says this fetcher acts on a person's request and may not follow robots.txt. A block here states your preference; it may not stop the visit.
Read from the robots.txt we serve. We want AI engines to read and cite this site, so every AI crawler is allowed everywhere except the app, the API and the sign-in pages (/dashboard/, /api/, /login, /signup, /sign-in, /sign-up). The file also declares Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes.
User-agent: meta-externalfetcher Allow: / Allow: /api/markdown/ Disallow: /dashboard/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /login Disallow: /signup Disallow: /sign-in Disallow: /sign-up
See the whole file. The same rules repeat in every group, because a crawler that matches a named group ignores the wildcard one.
Sources, checked 2026-09-24