{
  "$schema": "https://aethelforge.ai/schemas/index-edition-v1.json",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "iSimplifyMe",
    "url": "https://isimplifyme.com"
  },
  "canonical": "https://aethelforge.ai/index/001",
  "verification": {
    "keys_url": "/.well-known/aethelforge/keys"
  },
  "edition": "001",
  "title": "Edition 001",
  "window": {
    "start": "2026-08-24",
    "end": "2026-09-23",
    "days": 31
  },
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-24",
  "headline": "No channel carried a declared agent. The reading layer surged to twenty-eight times its baseline the day after Meta shipped Muse.",
  "summary": "Across twenty-five monitored sites, one live business line, twenty-seven chat tenants and fourteen form tenants, every channel could see crawlers and AI-referred people. None recorded an AI agent that declared itself while acting for someone. The adversarial layer still dominates the phone and a third of every contact form.",
  "fleet": {
    "sites": 25,
    "phoneLines": 1,
    "chatTenants": 27,
    "formTenants": 14
  },
  "declaredAgents": 0,
  "channels": [
    {
      "key": "web",
      "name": "Web",
      "unit": "bot hits",
      "volume": 272361,
      "breakdown": [
        {
          "layer": "reading",
          "label": "AI crawlers and fetchers",
          "count": 197101,
          "note": "Training crawlers, answer-engine index bots and on-demand fetchers, by declared user agent."
        },
        {
          "layer": "reading",
          "label": "Search and SEO crawlers",
          "count": 33985,
          "note": "Googlebot, Bingbot, Applebot-style indexers and SEO tooling."
        },
        {
          "layer": "reading",
          "label": "Social previewers",
          "count": 2302
        },
        {
          "layer": "unknown",
          "label": "Other and unidentified bots",
          "count": 38973
        },
        {
          "layer": "acting",
          "label": "Declared agents (signed requests)",
          "count": 0,
          "note": "Requests carrying a Web Bot Auth Signature-Agent header."
        }
      ],
      "facts": [
        {
          "label": "AI share of all bot traffic",
          "value": "72.4%"
        },
        {
          "label": "Meta-ExternalAgent",
          "value": "119,941",
          "note": "44.0% of every bot hit in the window"
        },
        {
          "label": "Assistant fetches for a person",
          "value": "10,926",
          "note": "ChatGPT-User pattern; an assistant fetching a page because someone asked"
        },
        {
          "label": "Nine-day surge, 9–17 September",
          "value": "104,058",
          "note": "peak 20,177 on 2026-09-16 against a pre-launch average of 725 a day"
        }
      ],
      "series": [
        {
          "date": "2026-08-24",
          "total": 4840,
          "ai": 2910,
          "meta": 1133,
          "fetch": 467
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-25",
          "total": 6110,
          "ai": 3633,
          "meta": 994,
          "fetch": 507
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-26",
          "total": 6832,
          "ai": 4127,
          "meta": 914,
          "fetch": 452
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-27",
          "total": 5477,
          "ai": 2736,
          "meta": 388,
          "fetch": 415
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-28",
          "total": 6057,
          "ai": 3323,
          "meta": 395,
          "fetch": 441
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-29",
          "total": 5407,
          "ai": 3211,
          "meta": 903,
          "fetch": 440
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-30",
          "total": 5650,
          "ai": 3519,
          "meta": 1011,
          "fetch": 406
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-08-31",
          "total": 4484,
          "ai": 1885,
          "meta": 285,
          "fetch": 424
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-01",
          "total": 4900,
          "ai": 2244,
          "meta": 397,
          "fetch": 460
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-02",
          "total": 4673,
          "ai": 2803,
          "meta": 629,
          "fetch": 428
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-03",
          "total": 4120,
          "ai": 2297,
          "meta": 430,
          "fetch": 415
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-04",
          "total": 4542,
          "ai": 2487,
          "meta": 353,
          "fetch": 422
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-05",
          "total": 5751,
          "ai": 3352,
          "meta": 692,
          "fetch": 406
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-06",
          "total": 3611,
          "ai": 2167,
          "meta": 727,
          "fetch": 274
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-07",
          "total": 5882,
          "ai": 3006,
          "meta": 1695,
          "fetch": 268
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-08",
          "total": 5369,
          "ai": 3049,
          "meta": 653,
          "fetch": 404
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-09",
          "total": 8778,
          "ai": 6454,
          "meta": 3125,
          "fetch": 238
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-10",
          "total": 10633,
          "ai": 8183,
          "meta": 6355,
          "fetch": 236
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-11",
          "total": 19199,
          "ai": 15999,
          "meta": 13860,
          "fetch": 374
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-12",
          "total": 15106,
          "ai": 12882,
          "meta": 10236,
          "fetch": 353
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-13",
          "total": 14024,
          "ai": 11763,
          "meta": 8445,
          "fetch": 356
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-14",
          "total": 16235,
          "ai": 14180,
          "meta": 12642,
          "fetch": 342
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-15",
          "total": 22563,
          "ai": 20388,
          "meta": 18234,
          "fetch": 334
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-16",
          "total": 25025,
          "ai": 22748,
          "meta": 20177,
          "fetch": 398
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-17",
          "total": 16794,
          "ai": 14298,
          "meta": 10984,
          "fetch": 280
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-18",
          "total": 6875,
          "ai": 4730,
          "meta": 437,
          "fetch": 247
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-19",
          "total": 5775,
          "ai": 3266,
          "meta": 1620,
          "fetch": 163
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-20",
          "total": 7462,
          "ai": 5212,
          "meta": 701,
          "fetch": 234
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-21",
          "total": 5735,
          "ai": 2642,
          "meta": 521,
          "fetch": 193
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-22",
          "total": 8508,
          "ai": 4354,
          "meta": 577,
          "fetch": 312
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-09-23",
          "total": 5944,
          "ai": 3253,
          "meta": 428,
          "fetch": 237
        }
      ],
      "topAgents": [
        {
          "agent": "Meta-ExternalAgent",
          "hits": 119941,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 44
        },
        {
          "agent": "Unknown",
          "hits": 31144,
          "category": "other",
          "share": 11.4
        },
        {
          "agent": "Bytespider",
          "hits": 23126,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 8.5
        },
        {
          "agent": "Bingbot",
          "hits": 11156,
          "category": "search",
          "share": 4.1
        },
        {
          "agent": "ChatGPT-User",
          "hits": 10926,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 4
        },
        {
          "agent": "Amazonbot",
          "hits": 9974,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 3.7
        },
        {
          "agent": "ClaudeBot",
          "hits": 8388,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 3.1
        },
        {
          "agent": "OAI-SearchBot",
          "hits": 8188,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 3
        },
        {
          "agent": "PerplexityBot",
          "hits": 6792,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 2.5
        },
        {
          "agent": "AhrefsBot",
          "hits": 5304,
          "category": "seo",
          "share": 1.9
        },
        {
          "agent": "Applebot",
          "hits": 5294,
          "category": "ai",
          "share": 1.9
        },
        {
          "agent": "Googlebot",
          "hits": 5184,
          "category": "search",
          "share": 1.9
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "phone",
      "name": "Phone",
      "unit": "calls",
      "volume": 68,
      "breakdown": [
        {
          "layer": "adversarial",
          "label": "Robocalls and dead air",
          "count": 63
        },
        {
          "layer": "human",
          "label": "People, or too little to tell",
          "count": 5
        },
        {
          "layer": "acting",
          "label": "AI agents calling for someone",
          "count": 0
        },
        {
          "layer": "proxy",
          "label": "People calling from an agent's brief",
          "count": 0
        }
      ],
      "facts": [
        {
          "label": "Adversarial share",
          "value": "93%"
        },
        {
          "label": "Declared agents",
          "value": "0"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "forms",
      "name": "Forms",
      "unit": "leads",
      "volume": 195,
      "breakdown": [
        {
          "layer": "human",
          "label": "People, unflagged",
          "count": 131
        },
        {
          "layer": "adversarial",
          "label": "Spam-flagged submissions",
          "count": 56
        },
        {
          "layer": "reading",
          "label": "People referred by an AI answer",
          "count": 8,
          "note": "Arrived from chatgpt.com; the person submitted, the assistant only pointed."
        },
        {
          "layer": "acting",
          "label": "Declared agents",
          "count": 0
        }
      ],
      "facts": [
        {
          "label": "Adversarial share",
          "value": "29%"
        },
        {
          "label": "AI-referred share",
          "value": "4%"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "chat",
      "name": "Chat",
      "unit": "sessions in the latest week",
      "volume": 155,
      "breakdown": [
        {
          "layer": "human",
          "label": "Sessions, week of 21 September",
          "count": 155
        },
        {
          "layer": "human",
          "label": "Sessions, week of 14 September",
          "count": 128
        },
        {
          "layer": "acting",
          "label": "Sessions marked agent-driven",
          "count": 0
        }
      ],
      "facts": [
        {
          "label": "Tenants reporting",
          "value": "27"
        },
        {
          "label": "Agent marker",
          "value": "0"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "method": "Web figures come from the bot records the fleet middleware writes for every non-human request, aggregated per day across all monitored sites; on-demand assistant fetches are counted by their published user-agent patterns. Phone figures come from the receptionist's call log for the window. Form figures come from the lead store, using the spam flag and referrer recorded at submission. Chat figures come from the concierge's weekly analysis. Test traffic generated by the publisher is excluded. Numbers are aggregates only.",
  "notes": [
    "Meta documents Meta-ExternalAgent as its training and indexing crawler. The surge began on 9 September, one day after Muse launched on 8 September, and ended on 18 September. The correlation is tight; causation is plausible and not proven.",
    "Meta's on-demand fetcher pattern recorded no hits in the window, consistent with Amazon's public complaint that Muse browses without identifying itself.",
    "A declared agent on the web is a request that carries Web Bot Auth signature headers. None arrived on any monitored site in the window."
  ],
  "signature": {
    "alg": "EdDSA",
    "kid": "aethelforge-2026-04",
    "value": "cD1INCOi6G5UaGhk7Ryda3AY2vqGEQNgdN89RiQyFcn3noy8LkllV1SDjwPOtrg8R_ePLmWGsiUEIwd8dOtcCw",
    "signed_at": "2026-09-24T08:07:57.564Z"
  }
}