User-triggered fetch
Claude-User: what it is.
Claude-User is the Anthropic agent that may visit a website when a person asks Claude a question that needs it.
Identity
- Operator: Anthropic
- User-agent token:
Claude-User - robots.txt token:
Claude-User - In Geordy's crawler directory: Fetches one page because Claude followed a link for a user. See the full list.
What it does, per Anthropic
Anthropic says Claude-User supports Claude users, and may access websites when a person asks Claude a question.
Anthropic says that disabling it prevents its system from retrieving your content in response to a user query, which may reduce your site's visibility for user-directed web search.
Anthropic documents ClaudeBot (training) and Claude-SearchBot (search quality) as separate agents.
robots.txt
Allow Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /Block Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-User
Disallow: /Anthropic's page does not print robots.txt lines for Claude-User, so the ones below are standard robots.txt syntax around the agent's name. The only lines it prints are for ClaudeBot.
Anthropic says its bots honor industry standard directives in robots.txt. It does not describe a separate rule for Claude-User.
Anthropic does not recommend blocking by IP address, because that may stop its bots reading your robots.txt. It says a request from an address on its published list (claude.com/crawling/bots.json) comes from Anthropic.
What Geordy observes
Share of eligible sites where Claude-User requested each Geordy-served file at least once, over the 90 days to 12 November 2026.
| Format | Evidence | Sites with a request | Median requests per site per day | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markdown | Established pattern | under 5% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Schema JSON (JSON-LD) | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| OG.json | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| YAML | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| LLMs.txt | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Humans.txt | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Manifest.json | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| RSS Feed | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
Figures are rounded and cover only sites that served the file for the whole window. Requests are to Geordy-served files, identified by user agent; a request is not evidence of use or citation. Pairs with too few independent sites are not shown. See how we measure.
Check your site
See whether your robots.txt currently allows or blocks Claude-User, and what else AI crawlers find on your site.
Sources
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026. Every statement about what Claude-User does comes from the operator's own documentation: