# Unveiling good and bad behaviors on the Agentic Internet

[Cloudflare](https://yomu.fyi/company/cloudflare) · Jin-Hee Lee · Aug 7, 2026

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Web traffic increasingly shifts between human interaction and automated agents, rendering point-in-time security checks ineffective against sophisticated automation. Cloudflare addresses this shift through continuous behavioral analysis designed to evaluate trust across entire user sessions rather than relying on static point-in-time hurdles. Its CDN-injected client-side system, Precursor, tracks continuous behavioral indicators like cursor movements to catch mid-session automated takeovers. To counter rapid bot adaptation, Cloudflare is introducing self-adjusting machine learning models under Adaptive Intelligence and non-deterministic defenses such as the AI Labyrinth. These tools allow site owners to poison scraper training data, trap crawlers in synthetic webs, or queue legitimate agents while dynamically penalizing abusive traffic.

## Context

Traditional web security generalized bots as bad and humans as good, but modern web traffic frequently involves legitimate automated agents and hybrid sessions that transition between human and automated interactions. Point-in-time checks like CAPTCHAs lack context and fail to catch suspicious activities that emerge mid-session or bypass initial client checks.

## Approach / What changed

Cloudflare deployed a trust-based behavioral framework using Precursor for continuous CDN-injected client-side movement analysis, updated its BotBase directory to track verified and unverified agents, developed a continuously self-adjusting machine learning engine called Adaptive Intelligence, and introduced advanced mitigations including AI Labyrinth, random response actions, and request queuing.

## Takeaways

- Precursor evaluates client-side behavioral signals like cursor movements continuously across full sessions rather than relying on point-in-time checks.
- Deterministic responses like constant 403 blocks create a bot antibiotic problem by allowing bot developers to easily probe and reverse-engineer defenses.
- The AI Labyrinth mitigation allows site owners to waste bot resources by trapping crawlers in endless page mazes, serving useless summaries, or poisoning AI training data with fake content.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [LLMs](https://yomu.fyi/topic/llm), [Machine Learning](https://yomu.fyi/topic/machine-learning), [Reliability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/reliability)

[Read original post](https://blog.cloudflare.com/good-and-bad-agentic-behaviors)