# Vercel Firewall can block AI crawlers and allow AI assistants separately

published: 2026-10-29T20:05:47.829Z
topic: infrastructure
source: https://vercel.com/changelog/block-ai-crawlers-and-assistants-independently-with-managed-rules
url: https://aiagentnews.io/stories/vercel-firewall-can-block-ai-crawlers-and-allow-ai-assistants-separately

Vercel's Firewall now lets teams log or block requests from AI crawlers and AI assistants separately, using the AI Bots managed ruleset. The ruleset is available on all plans and is configured under Bot Management in the Firewall rules.

Vercel says the AI Bots managed ruleset in Vercel Firewall can now log or block requests from AI crawlers and AI assistants as two separate categories. AI crawlers are bots that collect content for indexing and model training, while AI assistants are bots that fetch pages in response to user actions or search queries.

A project owner can, for example, block AI crawlers while still allowing AI assistants to retrieve content for user questions. Vercel updates the rules as new bots are added to the ruleset.

To configure it, open the project's Security > Firewall > Rules, enable AI Bots under Bot Management, and set an action for each category before reviewing and publishing the change. The same settings can be changed with the Vercel CLI using vercel firewall rules edit ai-bots, followed by vercel firewall diff and vercel firewall publish.

## Why it matters if you build agents

If you run agents that depend on fetching web pages, check which category your traffic falls into, since blocking AI assistants could stop them from retrieving your content for user queries.

Teams that want to keep training crawlers out while still allowing assistant traffic can now set that split in one place instead of writing custom rules.