Kimi-User user agent
Operated by Moonshot AI
Kimi-User is a Moonshot AI fetcher reported as reading pages on behalf of Kimi users.
The Kimi-User bot at a glance
- Kimi-User is operated by Moonshot AI and fetches a page when a person asks an AI assistant about it or shares its link.
- The robots.txt token for Kimi-User is Kimi-User.
- Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings.
- Kimi-User robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Kimi-User?
Kimi-User visits a page when a Kimi user asks the assistant to summarize or answer from it.
Its robots.txt behaviour is not documented.
Should you block Kimi-User?
Blocking Kimi-User is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Kimi-User
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Kimi-User is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop Kimi-User, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block Kimi-User
User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Kimi-User
User-agent: Kimi-User
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Kimi-User out of private areas only
User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Kimi-User
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Kimi\-User)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Kimi-User
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Kimi\-User) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Kimi-User")How to verify real Kimi-User traffic
Moonshot AI publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Kimi-User, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Kimi-User in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Kimi-User requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Kimi-User" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Kimi-User FAQ
Kimi-User uses the robots.txt token "Kimi-User". Moonshot AI does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Moonshot AI has not documented how Kimi-User treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
Blocking an AI assistant fetcher has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops the assistant from reading your page when a user asks about it or pastes your link, so its answer falls back to other sources.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Kimi-User" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Moonshot AI publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Kimi-User, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Kimi-User", for example with: grep -i "Kimi-User" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
