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The channels

What each channel can carry.

The four channels a business answers, what each one can actually carry about who is on the other end, and the instrument that reads it.

A signal that exists on one channel rarely exists on the next. The instrument on each one reads what that channel can actually carry, and writes the same label.

In one paragraph

Which channels does Aethelforge monitor?

Four: the phone line, where a receptionist reads carrier attestation and the transcript; the web, where middleware reads user agents and Web Bot Auth signatures; chat, where the concierge reads request signals and the conversation; and forms, where every lead carries the same inbound label beside its spam score.

Channel 01

Phone

The receptionist line — the channel no standard covers.

Edition 001: 68 calls · adversarial share 93% · declared agents 0

What it reads

Carrier attestation of the calling number, number reputation, whether anyone actually spoke, and a post-call analysis of the transcript.

What it labels

Every call gets a caller kind — human, AI agent, human for an agent, recording, or unknown — plus whether the caller declared itself, who it said it was calling for, and which vendor it named.

At the door
  • PHONEPERSONCALLER · ATTEST A
  • PHONEAUTOMATEDROBOCALL · ATTEST C
  • PHONEHUMAN PROXYPERSON ON AN AGENT BRIEF
  • PHONEAGENTVOICE · DECLARED · FOR PAT LEE
A declared agent, as the instrument records it
caller_kind: ai_agent
agent_declared: true
on_behalf_of: "Pat Lee"
agent_vendor: muse
agent_evidence:
  - "I'm an AI assistant calling on behalf of Pat Lee"
  - asked for new-patient availability, offered a callback number
Channel 02

Web

Twenty-five monitored sites behind one middleware.

Edition 001: 272,361 bot hits · ai share of all bot traffic 72.4% · declared agents 0

What it reads

The declared user agent, the crawler category behind it, and the Web Bot Auth signature header an agent attaches when it identifies itself.

What it labels

Every bot hit is a crawler, an agent fetch, a declared agent, or an unknown bot. A signing agent is tracked by the directory it publishes its keys under, even when it arrives with a browser user agent.

At the door
  • WEBREADINGMETA-EXTERNALAGENT
  • WEBREADINGCHATGPT-USER · FETCH
  • WEBAGENTHEADLESS BROWSER · UNSIGNED
  • WEBAGENTSIGNATURE-AGENT · SIGNED
A declared agent, as the instrument records it
kind: declared_agent
signed: true
agentDirectory: "agent-directory.example"
ua: Mozilla/5.0 (…) — a browser string; the signature is what identifies it
Channel 03

Chat

The concierge widget on twenty-seven tenant sites.

Edition 001: 155 sessions in the latest week · tenants reporting 27 · declared agents 0

What it reads

Request-time signals — a signed agent header, a headless or automation user agent — and the conversation itself, where an assistant tends to say what it is.

What it labels

Every archived session carries its inbound signals; the weekly analysis returns how many sessions were human, agent-driven, human for an agent, or automated, with the evidence scrubbed of personal detail.

At the door
  • CHATPERSONSESSION
  • CHATAGENTSCRIPTED CADENCE · UNDECLARED
  • CHATAGENT“MY USER ASKED ME…” · DECLARED
A declared agent, as the instrument records it
inbound:
  declaredAgent: null
  signed: false
  botUa: false
  selfDeclared: true   # "my user asked me to find out whether…"
Channel 04

Forms

Contact, quote and intake forms across fourteen tenants.

Edition 001: 195 leads · adversarial share 29% · declared agents 0

What it reads

The submission text, the user agent behind it, a forwarded signature header when the site passes one, and, for phone-originated leads, the receptionist’s own verdict.

What it labels

Every lead carries the same inbound label the other channels use, stored beside the spam score rather than inside it.

At the door
  • FORMSPERSONLEAD · REFERRED BY CHATGPT
  • FORMSAUTOMATEDSPAM
  • FORMSAGENT“I AM AN AI ASSISTANT…” · DECLARED
A declared agent, as the instrument records it
inbound:
  kind: ai_agent
  declared: true
  onBehalfOf: "a real person's name, as stated"
  source: message text

The current edition, channel by channel

FAQ

The channels, answered.

  1. 01Why is the phone the hardest channel?

    Because no standard says “this call is placed by an agent for this person.” Carrier attestation vouches for the number, not the principal, and an assistant can route a call through a human contractor. The receptionist therefore reads attestation first and the transcript second, and the post-call analysis labels who spoke and for whom.

  2. 02How does an agent identify itself on the web?

    By signing its requests under Web Bot Auth: an HTTP message signature, a Signature-Agent header naming the directory where its key is published, and a browser-like user agent that would otherwise be indistinguishable from a person. The middleware reads the header on the monitored sites and counts a signing agent as declared.

  3. 03Do you read chat conversations?

    The concierge reads request-time signals and the visitor’s own words to label the session, then a weekly analysis returns counts and up to ten evidence lines with personal detail removed. Only the aggregates reach the Index.

  4. 04What about forms an agent fills in by hand?

    An assistant driving a browser looks like a person until it says otherwise, which they often do — “I am an AI assistant submitting this on behalf of…” — or until the request behind the submission is signed. Both are read; the label is stored beside the spam score, never inside it.

Research

Research on the channels.

All notes on the channels
  1. Channels24 Sep 2026Twenty-eight times baseline: the crawler surge that followed MuseThe day after Muse shipped, Meta's indexing crawler went from 725 hits a day across our monitored sites to a peak of 20,177. What the surge was, what it was not, and what it cost.3 min