Show HN: The Internet's Open Source AI Paywall

darkestforest.xyz

13 points by muzz_y a day ago

I built DarkForest Protocol after watching sites get hammered by AI search bots.

Robots.txt isn't working. Some sites are using Nepenthes/Quixotic to poison models, but that's a lose-lose approach.

DarkForest is an open-source middleware (Express/Next.js/Vite) that lets any site establish clear boundaries with AI systems. One line of code redirects crawlers to a message about respecting content - no poisoning required.

This is just the start. The long-term vision is to build: (1) A collective intelligence network where sites share crawler patterns, and (2) An internet scale information marketplace for powering AI. Think Google Ads, but for AI systems seeking real-time access to your content.

I believe we need infrastructure for fair, automated value exchange at internet scale - not the endless race of litigation and blocking. Would love feedback, especially from: web hosts dealing with AI bot problems, devs who could implement/contribute/critique, and anyone with thoughts on the marketplace vision

Source: https://github.com/darkforest-protocol/darkforest-blocker

Discord: https://discord.gg/JMBhkhUx

pogue 10 hours ago

Does it work?

  • genewitch 10 hours ago

    It supports a few frameworks only right now. I'll have to look at the protocol code to see if it's able to be made generic so an HTML+vanilla+CSS or whatever can participate.

    I don't have any sites using those to test on.