# Meta-ExternalAgent

> Meta-ExternalAgent is Meta's general-purpose AI training crawler. It indexes web content used to train Meta's foundation models (Llama family) and improve Meta AI features. Site owners can opt out via robots.txt; this is distinct from FacebookBot (speech-recognition) and Meta-ExternalFetcher (live user requests).

Source: https://docs.centinelanalytica.com/crawlers/meta-externalagent

## At a glance

- Operator: [Meta](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler/)
- Type: AI Training
- RSL category: `ai-train`

The [bot directory page for Meta-ExternalAgent](https://www.centinelanalytica.com/bots/meta-externalagent) has its robots.txt token and the steps to verify a request from it.

## How Centinel checks it

- **User agent**: The request calls itself this crawler. Anyone can send the same string.
- **IP ranges**: The operator publishes the addresses it crawls from, and Centinel checks the client address against that list.

A request that passes one of these checks is Meta-ExternalAgent itself. One that only matches the user agent is reported as unverified. The match tokens, verification domains, and address feeds are not published here.

## Allowing or blocking it

The [crawler object](https://docs.centinelanalytica.com/api/crawlers.md) in the `/validate` response sets `access_allowed` to `true` only for a verified source that your tenant allowlists. A [policy rule](https://docs.centinelanalytica.com/admin/policy.md) can allow or block this crawler by its category, `AI Training`.

[Back to the crawler catalog](https://docs.centinelanalytica.com/concepts/crawler-catalog.md)

[Crawlers with a source check](https://docs.centinelanalytica.com/crawlers.md)