Valvai – AI Traffic Control Center

Description

Valvai turns your WordPress into an AI traffic control center.

• Block or allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot & co.
• Live dashboard with filters (All / AI / Allowed / Blocked)
• Per‑bot tabs to choose JSON vs HTML feed, content types, pricing
• Active 403 hard‑block for disallowed tokens
• robots.txt auto‑updates on every setting change

Roadmap: HTTP 402 paywall handshake, revenue dashboard, token marketplace.

Configuration

1. Visit Settings ▸ Valvai. You will see tabs: Dashboard, Permissions, and an AI‑specific tab for each allowed crawler.
2. Permissions tab:
   • Toggle Allow/Block for detected bots (e.g., GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot).
   • Or edit the manual lists “Blocked” and “Allowed” using comma‑separated names.
3. AI‑specific tabs (appear after a bot is allowed):
   • Data format: pick JSON or HTML.
   • Content sources: check which post types and taxonomies are exposed.
   • Pricing: choose currency and price per 1,000 words (FREE disables pricing).

Usage / How it works

• Logging: Every request from a suspected crawler is logged to the wp_valvai_crawl_log table. View the last 200 entries on the Dashboard and filter by All / AI / Allowed / Blocked.
• Blocking: Disallowed bots receive an HTTP 403 immediately.
• robots.txt: Your robots.txt is automatically augmented. Disallowed tokens get Disallow: /. Allowed tokens get an Allow rule pointing to a feed endpoint.

Testing the plugin

1. After activation, open Settings ▸ Valvai ▸ Dashboard. It will show “No logs yet” on a fresh site.
2. In a new browser tab, visit any public URL on your site with a test crawler User‑Agent, for example:
   • Use curl -A "GPTBot" https://your-site.example/
   • Or in the browser with a UA switcher extension.
3. Refresh the Dashboard: you should now see an entry with token GPTBot.
4. Go to the Permissions tab and switch GPTBot to Allow or Block.
5. Visit /robots.txt to verify entries update accordingly.
6. If allowed, open the AI‑specific tab for that bot to set JSON/HTML and sources.

Notes for developers

• All public PHP identifiers use the unique valvaitcc_ prefix to avoid conflicts.
• Legacy options (valvai_*) are automatically migrated to valvaitcc_* on activation; legacy reads are still honored for backward compatibility.
• robots.txt feed query uses ?valvaitcc=TOKEN&fmt=json|html.