Safe Official docs AI & LLM Bots

Kimi (Moonshot AI)

Q: What is the official user-agent string for Kimi (Moonshot AI)?

The official user-agent string for Kimi (Moonshot AI) is: Kimi-User . Use this exact string in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. Matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive. Verify a request genuinely comes from Kimi (Moonshot AI) by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP.

Q: Is Kimi (Moonshot AI) safe?

Yes, Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a safe and legitimate crawler operated by Moonshot AI. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309) and can be controlled with standard robots.txt rules.

Q: Will blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) hurt my SEO?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Kimi (Moonshot AI) is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.

Q: How do I block Kimi (Moonshot AI) in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: User-agent: Kimi-User Disallow: / This instructs Kimi (Moonshot AI) not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/ ).

Q: How do I verify if Kimi (Moonshot AI) is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string Kimi-User (case-insensitive: grep -i "Kimi-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log ). Filter by user-agent in your log analytics tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

Operated by Moonshot AI

Scout's quick take

Kimi-User (Kimi (Moonshot AI)) visits a page only when a person asks Moonshot AI's assistant to open it. It is not a background crawler.

# Block only if you really mean to
User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /

Check my AI search visibility Build a full robots.txt

Quick Facts

User-Agent:: Kimi-User
Category:: AI & LLM Bots
Operator:: Moonshot AI
Safety:: Safe
Blocking Impact:: Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:: 2/10
Official docs:: www.kimi.ai

Confirmed by the operator

Moonshot AI names Kimi-User on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.

What is Kimi (Moonshot AI)?

Kimi (Moonshot AI) is an on-demand AI fetcher operated by Moonshot AI. It retrieves a page only when a user explicitly asks an AI assistant or agent to read, summarize, or act on a specific URL. Because it is triggered by real user intent rather than bulk crawling, blocking it mainly prevents users from pulling your content into Moonshot AI's assistant.
Kimi (Moonshot AI) uses the user-agent token Kimi-User. You can control it via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.

What happens if you block Kimi (Moonshot AI)?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Kimi (Moonshot AI) is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.

Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

Want to see whether Kimi (Moonshot AI) actually visits you? Read how do I monitor AI bot traffic to my website?

How to block Kimi (Moonshot AI) with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: Kimi-User</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)

User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /

Allow all (robots.txt)

User-agent: Kimi-User
Allow: /

Block private only (robots.txt)

User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Nginx server block

# Nginx: Hard-block Kimi (Moonshot AI)
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Kimi-User") {
    return 403 "Bot blocked";
}

Apache .htaccess

# Apache: Hard-block Kimi (Moonshot AI)
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Kimi-User" bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Meta robots tag

X-Robots-Tag header

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Kimi (Moonshot AI) safe to allow?

Yes, Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a safe and legitimate crawler operated by Moonshot AI. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309) and can be controlled with standard robots.txt rules.

Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Kimi (Moonshot AI) requests resolve to Moonshot AI's domain.

What does Kimi (Moonshot AI) do?

Understanding Kimi (Moonshot AI)'s purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

Fetches a page only when a user asks an AI assistant to read it
Summarizes or extracts the URL the user provided
Triggered by real user intent, not bulk crawling
Low traffic volume compared with training crawlers
Blocking it prevents users from pulling your content into the assistant

Kimi (Moonshot AI) in context

Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a user-triggered agent operated by Moonshot AI. In plain terms, it fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it. Our database files it under AI and LLM crawlers and ranks it Tier 2, important crawlers from established AI and search operators. 74 of the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is low. So the decision about Kimi (Moonshot AI) rests on what you want from Moonshot AI, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Kimi (Moonshot AI)

Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track Kimi-User as a named token, so we do not publish an adoption figure for it. If you run a large site, your own logs are the best evidence of how often it visits.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Kimi (Moonshot AI)'s operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kimi (Moonshot AI) rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

Moonshot AI crawlers and close alternatives

Kimi (Moonshot AI) is one of 3 Moonshot AI crawlers in our database. A User-agent: Kimi-User group controls Kimi (Moonshot AI) only; the other Moonshot AI tokens below need their own lines.

Kimi-User: this crawler (Tier 2)
Kimi-SearchBot: Kimi Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 2)
KimiBot: Kimi Crawler, collects pages to train AI models (Tier 2)

To give Kimi (Moonshot AI) the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: Kimi-User with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Kimi (Moonshot AI) differently, give it its own group.

Other AI and LLM crawlers that do the same job (fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it) include ChatGPT Agent from OpenAI, ChatGPT Operator from OpenAI, ChatGPT-User from OpenAI, ChatGPT-User/2.0 from OpenAI, Claude-SearchBot from Anthropic, Claude-User from Anthropic. Deciding about Kimi (Moonshot AI) is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded Kimi-User on June 18, 2026. Moonshot AI documents it on kimi.ai, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Kimi (Moonshot AI) actually follows

Kimi (Moonshot AI) reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names Kimi-User, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /drafts/

Find the group. Kimi (Moonshot AI) looks for a group naming Kimi-User. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
The surprise. /private/ is open to Kimi (Moonshot AI), because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Kimi (Moonshot AI) if the file also has a User-agent: Kimi-User group?

No. Once a group names it, Kimi (Moonshot AI) reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) remove your pages from AI answers?

Often, yes. Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a user-triggered agent, so pages it cannot fetch can drop out of the answers or results it supports.

Test yourself: is User-agent: kimi-user the same as User-agent: Kimi-User?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow Kimi (Moonshot AI)? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for Kimi (Moonshot AI) by type of site
If you are...	Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite it	Allow it. Kimi (Moonshot AI) fetches pages for answers, so blocking it can remove you from them.
You license content and want to stop AI training	Blocking it does not stop training, because Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a user-triggered agent. Block the operator's training crawler instead.
You run an online shop	Allow it on product and category pages, which are the pages shoppers ask assistants about.
Your server is under load from bots	Rate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check Kimi (Moonshot AI) on your own site

Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for Kimi-User. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
List the Disallow lines in the group Kimi (Moonshot AI) follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Kimi (Moonshot AI) even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
Run our AI crawler access test to see how Kimi (Moonshot AI) and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with Kimi (Moonshot AI)

The errors we see most often with Kimi (Moonshot AI) in the files and firewalls we test:

Assuming a robots.txt rule will stop Kimi (Moonshot AI). User-triggered fetches act for a person, and some operators say robots.txt may not apply to them. Check the operator's statement above.
Blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) as if it were a bulk crawler. It fetches one page because a person asked; blocking it means that person's assistant cannot read your page.
Counting Kimi (Moonshot AI) visits as crawl volume. Each request maps to a real user question, which makes the paths it requests a useful signal of what people ask about you.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Kimi (Moonshot AI) from outside after every change.

Spotting Kimi (Moonshot AI) in your logs

robots.txt says what Kimi (Moonshot AI) may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "Kimi-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "Kimi-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the Kimi (Moonshot AI) user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

Kimi-User: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kimi (Moonshot AI) request with caution.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Kimi (Moonshot AI)?

The official user-agent string for Kimi (Moonshot AI) is: Kimi-User. Use this exact string in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. Matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive. Verify a request genuinely comes from Kimi (Moonshot AI) by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP.

Is Kimi (Moonshot AI) safe?

Yes, Kimi (Moonshot AI) is a safe and legitimate crawler operated by Moonshot AI. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309) and can be controlled with standard robots.txt rules.

Will blocking Kimi (Moonshot AI) hurt my SEO?

How do I block Kimi (Moonshot AI) in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:

User-agent: Kimi-User
Disallow: /

This instructs Kimi (Moonshot AI) not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).

Does Kimi (Moonshot AI) respect robots.txt?

Kimi (Moonshot AI) is operated by Moonshot AI and is expected to fetch and parse /robots.txt before crawling, following RFC 9309. For hard enforcement, combine robots.txt with server-level IP or user-agent blocking.

How do I verify if Kimi (Moonshot AI) is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string Kimi-User (case-insensitive: grep -i "Kimi-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Filter by user-agent in your log analytics tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).