# What is AgentGate?

> Bot and agent protection for forms and APIs: an invisible browser check, a policy gateway, and a lane for AI agents that sign their requests.

AgentGate tells people, declared AI agents and undeclared automation apart,
and lets each through the right door. It is a hosted service: you add your
site in the console and AgentGate runs the checks for you
([request access](/signup)).

It protects your site in three ways. They share one site configuration, one
rule engine and one dashboard, so you can start with one and add the others.

| Integration | Use it for | What you add |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [Browser widget + siteverify](/docs/get-started) | Forms and API calls made from your own pages | A script tag and one element on the page; one call to `POST /v1/siteverify` on your server |
| [Gateway](/docs/gateway) | Any HTTP app, including routes browsers never call | nginx `auth_request` (or Go / Node middleware) that asks `GET /v1/gateway/check` before forwarding |
| [Signed agents](/docs/agents) | AI agents and crawlers you want to admit on your terms | A per-site agent policy; agents sign requests with Web Bot Auth |

## What visitors see

Most people see nothing. The widget runs a small proof of work and collects
interaction timings (never what is typed) while the page is open. When the
evidence looks unusual, AgentGate asks for a short press-and-hold check,
with a keyboard option and a "Verify another way" alternative that needs no
pointer at all. See [How the check works](/docs/how-it-works).

## What your server sees

The widget hands your form a single-use **token**. Your server sends it to
`POST /v1/siteverify` with the site's backend secret and acts only when the
answer is `"success": true`. The widget alone enforces nothing.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> Server-side validation is mandatory. A form that accepts a request
> without calling `/v1/siteverify` is not protected, whatever the page shows.

## What agents get

Agents that sign their requests with [Web Bot Auth](/docs/web-bot-auth) are
verified by key, rate-limited per identity and never shown a human check.
A site can allow or deny each agent per action, put a price on actions
(`402 Payment Required`, pay-per-crawl headers), publish the tools an agent
may call, and hand a challenge to the agent's person on their phone.

## Every decision is explained

Each request gets labels (for example `agentgate:proof:missing` or
`agentgate:agent:verified:chatgpt`) and an ordered, WAF-style
[rule set](/docs/rules-overview) turns labels into allow, challenge, block,
drop or count. The dashboard shows the labels, the rule that decided, the
scores and the model version for every decision.

## Start safely

Every new site starts in [monitor mode](/docs/monitor-and-enforce): every
verification passes and AgentGate records what it would have done. Switch
to enforce once the would-have decisions look right.

## Honest limits

- The browser check raises the cost of automation. It is not proof that a
  person is present: signals are collected in the browser and a determined
  attacker can forge them.
- The hosted service runs in one region today; multi-region hosting is on
  the [roadmap](/roadmap).
- Models are trained on synthetic data; unmeasured detectors ship in count
  mode. See the [threat model](/docs/threat-model).