koala73 / koala73/worldmonitor
feat(agent-readiness): Web Bot Auth — publish /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory + sign seeder fetches (honest-crawler fix for #3799)
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- Dominant language
- TypeScript
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Description
Telnyx-parity review (2026-07-06). Telnyx serves a Web Bot Auth directory at /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory with 1 Ed25519 JWK (kty=OKP, crv=Ed25519, kid, nbf, exp) and passes the emerging-check. We 404.
Two-sided value:
- Origin side (cheap): publish the directory so the emerging check and future agent-verification flows resolve.
- Crawler side (the real win): #3799 flagged that our Railway seeders reach OREF/corridor-risk sources by spoofing browser headers. Web Bot Auth (HTTP Message Signatures, RFC 9421 + the bot-auth draft) is the principled alternative: sign outbound seeder requests with an Ed25519 key, publish the public key in our directory, send a descriptive UA — origins can then verify us instead of us impersonating Chrome. Cloudflare already verifies WBA signatures, and several of our upstream sources sit behind Cloudflare.
Scope: key generation/rotation story (nbf/exp), directory file (static, .well-known already excluded from the SPA catch-all), signing middleware in the seeder fetch path, opt-in per source.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Read RFC 9421 and the bot-auth draft, then trace the seeder fetch path and the existing .well-known handling. The work is complete when the directory, key generation and rotation story, signed outbound fetches, descriptive user agent, and per-source opt-in are implemented without browser-header spoofing.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- api, backend, security
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 42/100