[assafbar2]

What kind of change?

• New agent listing (content/agents/<slug>.json added)
• Correction to an existing entry (URL fix, renamed product, new access method…)
• Removal (product discontinued)
• Code / site change

Why

On Nov 2 at 5:08 PM PST, Vercel paused the Hobby team because Fast Origin Transfer reached 305% of its 10 GB monthly limit: 17.4 GB of function transfer plus 14.3 GB of ISR reads over 30 days. Two things drove it:

• Crawlers on query pages. /compare?a=…&b=…, /stack?items=… and /operator?q=… render per request, and every one links to more mixes, so a crawler never runs out. On Nov 2, PerplexityBot fetched /compare 255,336 times, GoogleOther 149,385 times and ClaudeBot 67,336 times.
• What each page view pulls from the origin. Next prefetched every link as soon as it scrolled into view, and the pages were heavy. A CDN miss on a prerendered page is billed as an ISR read of the uncompressed page. Listing pages make up 53% of ISR reads, category pages 28% and the changelog 8.5%.

Agents' full e2e runs against production also caused about 23% of cache misses in the week of Oct 26.

What this does

Crawlers (app/robots.ts, vercel.json, tests/robots.test.ts):

• In robots.txt, the * group now disallows /browse?, /compare?, /stack?, /operator? and the three dynamic share cards. The bare pages stay open, and the group adds Crawl-delay: 5.
• Link-preview bots (Twitterbot, facebookexternalhit, LinkedInBot, Slackbot, Discordbot and others) get their own group, so shared links still unfurl with their cards.
• SEO-tool crawlers (AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, MJ12bot, DotBot, BLEXBot, DataForSeoBot, Barkrowler and serpstatbot) get Disallow: /.
• For crawlers that ignore robots.txt, vercel.json routes with mitigate: deny turn away crawler user agents on /compare?a=, /stack?items=, /operator?q= and the three cards.
  • Link previews and assistants fetching a page for a person (ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User, Claude-User and MistralAI-User) are exempt.
  • This is a Vercel firewall rule in config, which is free on every plan.

Prefetch on intent (components/Link.tsx, 52 import swaps, an ESLint rule):

• Every page link goes through a wrapper around next/link that prefetches only once a pointer, touch or focus reaches the link.
• Links with a query never prefetch, since each prefetch would run a function.
• ESLint now rejects direct next/link imports anywhere else.

Lighter markup (app/globals.css, cards, badges, footer, changelog, category rail, dotted leaders):

• Server components send their markup twice per page: once in the HTML and once in the RSC payload. The utility strings that every card, badge and footer link repeated are now short component classes built with @apply.
• The Verified and Official icons are now CSS masks instead of inline SVGs.
• Category pages' JSON-LD item lists no longer repeat each listing's description.

e2e (e2e/target.mjs, e2e/playwright.config.mjs, e2e/tests/05-edge.spec.mjs, README):

• The suite now runs against a local production build on port 3100, which the config builds and starts.
• With E2E_BASE_URL set to a deployment, only the smoke and edge specs run, unless E2E_FULL=1.
• The new 05-edge spec checks what Vercel's edge adds:
  • HSTS, and the http and www redirects (these moved here from 95-seo-meta-headers);
  • crawlers getting 403 on query pages and their cards;
  • people and link previews still getting 200.
• Six tests that only passed on production now check the site they run against.

Release: version 2.8.5, a patch, with a CHANGELOG entry.

Measured

Page weight (uncompressed HTML, local production builds of main and this branch):

Page	main	this branch	change
/	289 KB	239 KB	−17%
/agents/claude-code	107 KB	74 KB	−31%
/agents/linear	115 KB	83 KB	−28%
/categories/code-devtools	2,052 KB	1,042 KB	−49%
/categories/data-analytics	661 KB	342 KB	−48%
/changelog	2,961 KB	2,134 KB	−28%
/browse	6,195 KB	3,197 KB	−48%
/browse?task=query-a-database	434 KB	230 KB	−47%

Background requests in Chrome at 1440×900, counting from page load through a scroll to the bottom:

Page	main	this branch
/	279 (1.2 MB)	0
/categories/code-devtools	851 (2.5 MB)	0
/agents/claude-code	116 (1.4 MB)	0
/changelog	974 (5.7 MB)	0

Hovering a card prefetches its listing, and the click then renders the page in 48 ms with no further requests.

Testing

• tsc; lint (no errors, only the 4 warnings already on main); vitest (684 passed); validate-content; check-try-links; build.
• Full e2e against a local production build of this branch: 923 passed, and 10 skipped (the edge checks, which need Vercel's edge).
• Visual comparison of main and this branch:
  • 90 screenshot pairs: 19 pages at desktop and phone sizes in light and dark, plus card, rail, footer, changelog and inline-link hover and focus states.
  • Every pair has the same dimensions.
  • The only differing pixels are anti-aliasing inside the 12 px Verified and Official icons, and a one-step shade (RGB 16 vs 17) between leader dots in dark mode.
• To check on the preview and again after merge: robots.txt, then E2E_BASE_URL=<deployment> npm run test:e2e (smoke and edge only).

Checklist

• npx tsx scripts/validate-content.ts passes locally
• Added a line to content/changelog.json (no listing changed)
• All URLs load
• Skills describe real, documented capabilities (not aspirations)
• Any Use it now field is copied from the product's own docs, with no placeholders
• For vendor submissions: "verified": false (maintainers verify & flip)
• official left unset (maintainers set it; if you think it applies, link the evidence above. See CONTRIBUTING.md → Official listings)
• Listing and catalog changes are contributed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (see LICENSE-DATA); code under MIT

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated
agentswitchboard.dev	Ready	Preview	Nov 3, 2026 4:36am UTC