CrawlCheck

Directory · Inference and GPU compute

Modal — what a crawler receives from modal.com

Website measurement, not a product review. This page records what machine clients received from modal.com. It does not evaluate Modal software, features, pricing or support.

78
Cgrade

AI assistants like ChatGPT can read your site, but find little to quote about your product.

AI visibility 78/100, measured 2026-10-31 03:05 UTC from outside its network, as each named AI and search crawler and as a browser. An engine can reach and read this site. What is left is giving it something specific to say.

Held at C A medium-severity finding sets the letter.

Open the full report modal.com ↗

5

findings

✓

llms.txt on its host

✗

entity map on its host

7

scans on record since 2026-09-18

The three stages, in the order an engine hits a site

Each stage gates the next: an engine that cannot reach a page never reads it, and one that cannot read it never quotes it.

81

Stage 1 · 40% of the score

Reach

Can a named answer-engine crawler get your pages at all?

At least one answer engine was refused, challenged or served less than a browser.

75

Stage 2 · 30% of the score

Read

Once it has the bytes, can it find the words?

The content is buried in markup, or the files that guide a crawler are missing.

78

Stage 3 · 30% of the score

Quote

Is there a specific fact it can state and attribute?

An assistant would have to paraphrase your page instead of quoting a fact.

The stage to fix first is read, the lowest of the three.

What to fix

5 findings on this site, 2 of them scored serious. Every one is named below; the top one is shown in full, free. What we saw, why each matters, how to fix it and the bytes behind it are what a licence buys — or we implement the whole list for you.

2 Medium 1 Low 2 Note

1robots.txt rules do not apply to named agents1 named User-agent group (2 agents) do not repeat 28 of the Disallow rules the `*` group carries. A crawler obeys only its own most-specific group and ignores `MediumSetting

What we saw

1 named User-agent group (2 agents) do not repeat 28 of the Disallow rules the `*` group carries. A crawler obeys only its own most-specific group and ignores `*` entirely, so those rules do not apply to any of the named agents (some declare their own, different rules). Worst group: `googlebot, bingbot` bypasses /account-migration, /account-pending, /apps, /authorize, /clusters, /containers, /dashboard, /dd, /endpoints, /evaluations, /home, /id, /images, /internal, /login, /logs, /notebooks, /oauth, /ph, /runners. This includes a SEARCH crawler (googlebot, bingbot) — the bypassed paths are being crawled and can enter the index. /robots.txt

Why it matters

A crawler reads only the User-agent group that matches it best and ignores every other group, including `*`. Naming an agent and giving it only `Allow: /` therefore deletes all of your `*` Disallow rules for that agent. The file still parses and the agent still reaches your homepage, so this is invisible on inspection — but the paths you meant to keep out of search are open, and search engines will crawl and may index them.

How to fix it

Every User-agent group that names a crawler must repeat the Disallow rules you want applied. A named group with no rules means 'allow everything' for that crawler.

Setting: a setting on the server, CDN, DNS or a plugin — no code and no writing

Site deployed from GitHub

  1. Add this workflow file as .github/workflows/crawlcheck.yml (change robots-path if robots.txt lives elsewhere).
  2. Run it from the Actions tab: it opens one pull request with the corrected robots.txt, every change listed. Review, merge, deploy.

How the action works

Paste this

Each crawler obeys only its own group, so a named group must repeat the rules you want. The corrected file below copies them in for you.

The whole corrected robots.txt for modal.com · built from the live file, every change listed at the top.

Fix it with a coding agent

Paste into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex, opened on the code that serves this site.

Show prompt
You are working in the codebase (or server/CDN configuration) that serves modal.com. A crawler audit found the problem below. Fix it at the source, keep the change as small as possible, and do not change anything a visitor sees unless the fix requires it.

Finding: robots.txt rules do not apply to named agents (ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED, medium severity)
Page: https://modal.com/robots.txt
What was measured: 1 named User-agent group (2 agents) do not repeat 28 of the Disallow rules the `*` group carries. A crawler obeys only its own most-specific group and ignores `*` entirely, so those rules do not apply to any of the named agents (some declare their own, different rules). Worst group: `googlebot, bingbot` bypasses /account-migration, /account-pending, /apps, /authorize, /clusters, /containers, /dashboard, /dd, /endpoints, /evaluations, /home, /id, /images, /internal, /login, /logs, /notebooks, /oauth, /ph, /runners. This includes a SEARCH crawler (googlebot, bingbot) — the bypassed paths are being crawled and can enter the index.
Why it matters: A crawler reads only the User-agent group that matches it best and ignores every other group, including `*`. Naming an agent and giving it only `Allow: /` therefore deletes all of your `*` Disallow rules for that agent. The file still parses and the agent still reaches your homepage, so this is invisible on inspection — but the paths you meant to keep out of search are open, and search engines will crawl and may index them.
How to fix it: Every User-agent group that names a crawler must repeat the Disallow rules you want applied. A named group with no rules means 'allow everything' for that crawler.

Rule and examples: https://crawlcheck.io/rules/ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED
Full report (markdown): https://crawlcheck.io/r/fal9j1wsn9.md

When you are done:
1. Tell me which files or settings you changed and why.
2. If the fix is a server, CDN or cache setting you cannot change from the code, say exactly where it is set.
3. After deploying, re-scan at https://crawlcheck.io/?url=modal.com . The fix counts when ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED is gone from the new report.
Why this was decided
RuleROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED · rule pack sv34 · scope core
Evaluated2026-10-31 03:05:54 UTC
Decisiond1:0a945383dcd2c855b730 · finding f1:e8db6c735cbb1d914805 resolve either at /api/graph/<id> with a key
Observercrawlcheck-worker build 77ae0f18 from LAX · audit v4

What it rests on

IdentityStatusBytessha256Kept
read: /robots.txt2001,417fbc9b1d3def8kept

21 more in the manifest.

Artifacts: manifest:482fbb1f0296a218e83498b989bfde3ab8a7ce62fd99d7658b102f576eedb529

Grade effect Caps the letter at C together with 1 other medium-severity finding; the letter rises only when all of them are gone. Moves no points.

Rule ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED under scoring rules v34 · fingerprint ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED|/robots.txt · persisting (7 scans)

Verify the fix Re-scan after the change. This finding is cleared when ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED is no longer reported at /robots.txt; if it comes back after clearing, it is marked a regression, not a new finding.

ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED · full transcript

2Almost nothing a machine receives from this page is readable text🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Medium
3Links send crawlers to the same pages under many different addresses🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Low
4The homepage is reached through a chain of redirects🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
5A missing agent file answers with a full page🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note

Open the other 4

What we saw, why it matters, how to fix it, and the evidence bytes for every finding — on this report and every re-scan. From $29 a month.

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The chain a crawler follows

The chain breaks at entity graph. Everything after that point is only reachable by a crawler guessing the conventional path.

✓robots.txtEvery crawler reads this first
✓sitemapNamed in robots.txt and resolves
✓llms.txtPoints onward, links stay on this host
✗entity graphParses as JSON and points home

A machine file that does not parse is worth less than one that is absent, because it looks present. Rows behind this.

Where the bytes go

Of the 430,518 decompressed bytes the homepage delivers, 2.1% is text a reader or a model can actually use. Most of what a crawler downloads here is not words.

  • Readable text 2.1% · 8,856 B
  • Markup & attributes 27% · 116,053 B
  • Structured data (JSON-LD) 0.1% · 541 B
  • Inline CSS 0.1% · 251 B
  • Inline JavaScript 0.6% · 2,517 B
  • Inline SVG 66.9% · 287,899 B
  • HTML comments 3.3% · 14,401 B

The individual blocks that weigh the most, so the fix is a search rather than a hunt:

  • Inline SVG · 29,644 B (6.9%) — unnamedopens <!--[--><path d="M0 11.8L-10.2 5.9V-5.9L0 -11.8L10.2 -5.9V5.9Z" class=
  • Inline SVG · 15,011 B (3.5%) — unnamedopens <g id="Vector"><path d="M50.4964 26.9989C48.5994 26.9989 46.9544 26.57
  • Inline SVG · 12,613 B (2.9%) — .absoluteopens <g id="Mask group"><mask id="mask0_0_43" style="mask-type:alpha" maskU
  • Inline SVG · 12,572 B (2.9%) — unnamedopens <g id="Mask group"><mask id="mask0_0_43" style="mask-type:alpha" maskU
  • Inline SVG · 11,286 B (2.6%) — unnamedopens use]:animate-v2-glyph-flash [&amp;>use]:[animation-delay:calc(var(--ph
Section average over 2 scans on this score version · held at 78 since 2026-10-31
0501002026-10-23 16:03 · 78/100 · 5 findings2026-10-31 03:05 · 78/100 · 5 findings2026-10-232026-10-31

What changed

  1. 2026-10-23a new finding appeared: links send crawlers to the same pages under many different addressesappeared
  2. 2026-10-17the homepage began taking more than one redirect to reachappeared
  3. 2026-10-04robots.txt named a sitemapresolved
  4. 2026-10-04a sitemap became readableresolved

7 scans on record, first 2026-09-18. Score movements are shown only between readings taken under the same score version; finding codes are comparable across all of them.

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By email instead: hello@crawlcheck.io. Category “Inference and GPU compute” is our label for what the product is primarily sold as; it is not scored. Back to the directory.