Cline
Cline is an AI coding tool operated by Cline. Developers use it to write, debug, or understand code, and it visits the web to fetch documentation, package metadata, code samples, or related references.
Visits are user-initiated. A developer types a question or pastes a URL and Cline retrieves it on their behalf. You will not see scheduled crawling, just bursts that follow user activity.
Allowing this agent makes your developer documentation available to a much larger audience than just the people who land on your site directly. Your docs end up inside the IDE.
See Cline on your own site
Match the User-Agent header on incoming requests against the pattern below.
regex
For higher confidence, also verify the source IP against the operator's published ranges. UA strings can be spoofed; IP ownership is harder to fake.
Renders JavaScript
Sometimes
IP verification
User-Agent only
Crawl frequency
Burst, user-driven
Honors robots.txt
Yes
Honors Crawl-delay
Varies
Should I let Cline through?
In most cases, yes. Lets your developer documentation reach a much larger audience inside the IDE. If volume gets noisy, rate-limit it before you block it outright.
Does blocking Cline affect my Google rankings?
No. Cline fetches a page only when a user is actively asking Cline a question. It has nothing to do with how Google or Bing rank you. The cost of blocking is that Cline can't quote your content in its answer.
How do I confirm a request is really from Cline?
Look at the User-Agent header in your access logs and match it against the strings listed above. Worth knowing that the User-Agent is easy to fake, so this check tells you "the traffic claims to be Cline", not "the traffic is genuinely Cline". If you need stronger guarantees, look for a reverse-DNS check or wait for Cline to publish IP ranges.
Does a Cline visit count as a real user visit?
Sort of. There is a human asking Cline a question on the other end, but they never load your page in their own browser. They see whatever Cline quotes back, usually a snippet plus a citation link. Count it as upstream attention rather than as a session.
What's the cleanest way to control Cline?
Two layers. Robots.txt for the polite crawlers that read it, and rules at your CDN or edge for the ones that don't. Rankly's Agent Experience handles both from a single config, so you can allow, block, rate-limit, or serve a stripped-down version per bot. Agent Analytics handles the observation half so you know which bots are actually worth a rule.