docs: correct the bot-score claims behind the browser poller (#99)
Docs only. No code changes - `git diff origin/main --stat` touches five Markdown files and adds one research note. ## What was wrong Several docs explained Cloudflare challenges as a "bot score" that our request rate could worsen. That mechanism does not exist on these sites. Researched live on 2026-08-12 against Cloudflare's own documentation and blog plus RFC 9309 - 22 primary pages, every claim carrying a source URL and read date, seven areas explicitly marked `Not publicly documented`. The note is `docs/research/cloudflare-bot-scoring-and-poll-cadence.md`. - The 1-99 bot score is **Enterprise Bot Management only**. A free-plan zone has no score at all; it gets Bot Fight Mode, which matches *signatures* (headless browsers, cloud-hosting IPs). - **No per-IP request rate is documented as an input to challenge issuance.** Volume is policed by Rate Limiting Rules, a separate opt-in product: one rule, IP-only counting, 10-second windows on Free. Published DDoS thresholds are ~1,000 errors/sec. - **`cf_clearance` defaults to 30 minutes**, so every cadence at or above 1 hour re-solves the challenge anyway. Cadence changes how many ~4s solves happen per day and nothing else. - The documented risk is **fingerprint quality**, which this repo already solved (real Chrome, stock UA, non-UTC clock). ## What changed | File | Correction | |---|---| | `AGENTS.md` | The block is per-zone configuration plus request fingerprint, not IP reputation. comix.to turning its gate on 2026-08-12 is the worked example. Residential egress avoids the cloud-hosting-IP *signature* rather than earning a better score. The UTC measurement stands; its mechanism is now marked undocumented. | | `backend/AGENTS.md` | Says why `_BROWSER_COOLDOWN` is longer: cost, not safety. | | `docs/adr/0003` | Dated correction - the sites do not "bot-score" the VPS IP. Decision stands on its sweep-depth argument. | | `docs/adr/0006` | Dated correction - no score to be better at. Decision stands on VPS memory. | | `DEPLOY.md` | A red kagane smoke run means the Site's settings or this Chrome's fingerprint moved, not "Cloudflare's scoring". | ADRs got dated `Corrected 2026-08-12:` paragraphs rather than silent rewrites - the record of what was decided stays intact, only the wrong mechanism is retracted. ## Deliberately not in this PR - **The 6h browser cooldown is unchanged.** I had lowered it to 1h and reverted that; cadence is a behaviour change and belongs with the comix work in #98, not in a docs correction. - **Two code comments still carry the myth**: `backend/main.go:83-84` ("a hammer against sites that are already bot-scoring us"). Left alone to keep this diff docs-only. Related: #98. Reviewed-on: #99 Co-authored-by: Sulthan Zaki <sultankiki05@gmail.com> Co-committed-by: Sulthan Zaki <sultankiki05@gmail.com>
This commit was merged in pull request #99.
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@@ -19,8 +19,15 @@ and because the Series row now knows how many Readers hold it, the poll queue is
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absorbs the shortfall. That ordering is only expressible because the split happened.
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Raising throughput instead was rejected: sweeping 400 Series hourly needs the stagger
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cut from 20s to ~9s, doubling request rate against sites that already bot-score the
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single VPS IP.
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cut from 20s to ~9s, doubling request rate against sites already fronted by Cloudflare
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from the single VPS IP.
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Corrected 2026-08-12: the original wording said those sites "bot-score" the VPS IP.
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They do not — the 1-99 bot score is Enterprise Bot Management only, and no per-IP
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request rate is documented as an input to challenge issuance
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(`docs/research/cloudflare-bot-scoring-and-poll-cadence.md`). The decision stands on
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its first argument, sweep depth versus the 1-hour cooldown; the rate-limit fear was
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never evidenced.
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## Only the Poll writes Series fields
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