Technical Guide: Protecting Forgejo Instances from AI Web Crawlers with Nginx Configuration

TL;DR:Put that in your nginx config:location / {

# needed to still allow git clone from http/https URLs if ($http_user_agent ~* "git/|git-lfs/") { set $bypass_cookie 1; }

# If we see the expected cookie; we could also bypass the blocker page if ($cookie_Yogsototh_opens_the_door = "1") { set $bypass_cookie 1; }

# Redirect to 418 if neither condition is met if ($bypass_cookie != 1) { add_header Content-Type text/html always; return 418 '<script>document.cookie = "Yogsototh_opens_the_door=1; Path=/"; window.location.reload();</script>'; }