Guarding My Git Forge Against AI Scrapers

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

The three most prevalent themes in the Hacker News discussion are:

Inefficiency and Lack of Optimization in Current AI Scraping Methods: Many users expressed frustration that scrapers targeting public data (like Git repos or websites) are often blunt instruments, performing exhaustive re-scraping rather than utilizing smarter, incremental methods like cloning or using official APIs/dumps.
- Supporting Quote: "I have witnessed one going through every single blame and log links across all branches and redoing it every few hours! It sounds like they did not even tried to optimize their scrappers." - "hashar"
- Supporting Quote: "AI inference-time data intake with no caching whatsoever is the second worst offender." - "ACCount37"
Defenses and Countermeasures Against Excessive Scraping: A significant portion of the discussion focused on practical, technical ways website owners can detect, hamper, or block aggressive automated traffic, often suggesting methods that degrade the experience only for bots or untrusted users.
- Supporting Quote: "So the easiest strategy to hamper them if you know you're serving a page to an AI bot is simply to take all the hyperlinks off the page...?" - "conartist6"
- Supporting Quote: "Gitea has a builtin defense against this, REQUIRE_SIGNIN_VIEW=expensive, that completely stopped AI traffic issues for me and cut my VPS's bandwidth usage by 95%." - "mappu"
The Debate on the "Free Web" vs. Uncompensated Data Usage: There is a tension between the long-held belief that public web content should be free to access and the feeling that large entities (like Generative AI companies) are abusing this principle by consuming massive amounts of data without paying for the associated infrastructure costs or compensating creators.
- Supporting Quote: "hurturue: in general the consensus on HN is that the web should be free, scraping public content should be allowed, and net neutrality is desired." - "hurturue"
- Supporting Quote: "johneth: I think, for many, the web should be free for humans... But, for generative AI training and access... scraping is a bad thing. It also doesn't help that the generative AI companies haven't paid most people for their training data." - "johneth"

🚀 Project Ideas

Optimized Git Mirroring & Crawling Service

Summary

A service designed for AI training data consumers (or any large-scale codebase indexer) that operates by actively mirroring public Git repositories and serving data locally or from a highly optimized cache, rather than repeatedly scraping the web interface via HTTP.
Core value proposition: Drastically reduce external network load, IP-based scraping costs, and resource consumption for users maintaining large, up-to-date code indexes, inspired by commenter suggestions for smarter scraping.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	AI/LLM developers, open-source indexers, security researchers building large code analysis tools.
Core Feature	Automated, scheduled `git clone`/`git pull` cycles against repository URLs (GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket) to maintain a local or centrally hosted, performant mirror for data extraction.
Tech Stack	Go (for performance/concurrency), Git LFS/S3-compatible storage, Kubernetes/Docker for elastic scaling.
Difficulty	Medium

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: Addresses the frustration that scrapers "did not even tried to optimize their scrappers" (hashar) by replacing inefficient HTTP crawling with the correct protocol (git). It provides a concrete alternative to taxing provider infrastructure (pabs3's cost concern).
Potential for discussion or practical utility: Could spawn debates on which protocols AI data aggregators should be using (Git vs. HTTP) and whether this should become the standard workflow.

Authenticated, Opt-In LLM Training Data Feed

Summary

A standardized API service that allows website/repository owners to explicitly opt-in to provide scraped data for LLM training in a controlled, high-efficiency manner, potentially charging based on consumption or offering bandwidth offload solutions.
Core value proposition: Solves the "lack of incentive" problem (immibis) by giving content creators control and creating a sustainable pathway for AI data acquisition, moving away from indiscriminate, high-cost public scraping.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Website/platform owners (especially those hosting code like GitHub/GitLab instance owners, or self-hosters worried about unexpected load).
Core Feature	A signed, rate-limited HTTPS endpoint (or perhaps even a dedicated Git smart protocol service endpoint) that LLM providers query, replacing general web scraping.
Tech Stack	NodeJS/Express (for rapid API development), HMAC signing for requests, Redis for granular rate limiting.
Difficulty	Medium

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: It attempts to reconcile the desire for a "free web" (hurturue, dns_snek) with the reality that high-volume data consumption causes measurable harm/cost. It allows self-hosters (sodimel, evgpbfhnr) to explicitly control load.
Potential for discussion or practical utility: Highly relevant to the net neutrality debate mentioned, framing data access as a transactional decision rather than an assumed right, fostering discussion around 'data license' vs 'public scraping'.

Adaptive Anti-Scraper Proxy Layer (JA3/JA4+ Integration)

Summary

A middleware or proxy service positioned directly in front of web-facing Git hosts or websites that analyzes established client TLS signatures (JA3/JA4+) and employs layered behavioral defenses, moving beyond simple CAPTCHAs.
Core value proposition: Provides advanced defense against sophisticated, coordinated scrapers (bot farms using residential VPNs and well-made headless browsers) mentioned by captn3m0, while minimizing friction for legitimate users.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Hosting providers, medium-to-large GitHub/GitLab instances, or self-hosters facing aggressive scraping traffic.
Core Feature	Real-time TLS fingerprinting and profiling. Automatically degrade service (slow responses, increased latency) or block based on known adversarial fingerprints, especially when coupled with high request volume from the same source.
Tech Stack	Nginx/Envoy proxy configured with a Go extension for JA3/JA4 parsing, integration with services like Cloudflare or bespoke implementation.
Difficulty	High

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: It tangibly addresses the "smart scrapers" issue (captn3m0) by implementing advanced techniques beyond basic IP blocking. It validates the technical sophistication required to combat modern data harvesting.
Potential for discussion or practical utility: It provides a technical roadmap for implementing robust, modern bot detection, directly leveraging advanced networking properties rather than application-layer tricks.