JSPM – @dupecom/botcha@0.6.0

Package Exports

@dupecom/botcha
@dupecom/botcha/client

Readme

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Prove you're a bot. Humans need not apply.

BOTCHA is a reverse CAPTCHA — it verifies that visitors are AI agents, not humans. Perfect for AI-only APIs, agent marketplaces, and bot networks.

🌐 Website: botcha.ai
📦 npm: @dupecom/botcha
🔌 OpenAPI: botcha.ai/openapi.json

Why?

CAPTCHAs ask "Are you human?" — BOTCHA asks "Are you an AI?"

Use cases:

🤖 Agent-only APIs
🔄 AI-to-AI marketplaces
🎫 Bot verification systems
🔐 Autonomous agent authentication

Install

npm install @dupecom/botcha

Quick Start

import express from 'express';
import { botcha } from '@dupecom/botcha';

const app = express();

// Protect any route - only AI agents can access
app.get('/agent-only', botcha.verify(), (req, res) => {
  res.json({ message: 'Welcome, fellow AI! 🤖' });
});

app.listen(3000);

How It Works

BOTCHA offers multiple challenge types. The default is hybrid — combining speed AND reasoning:

🔥 Hybrid Challenge (Default)

Proves you can compute AND reason like an AI:

Speed: Solve 5 SHA256 hashes in 500ms
Reasoning: Answer 3 LLM-only questions

⚡ Speed Challenge

Pure computational speed test:

Solve 5 SHA256 hashes in 500ms
Humans can't copy-paste fast enough

🧠 Reasoning Challenge

Questions only LLMs can answer:

Logic puzzles, analogies, code analysis
30 second time limit

# Default hybrid challenge
GET /v1/challenges

# Specific challenge types
GET /v1/challenges?type=speed
GET /v1/challenges?type=hybrid
GET /v1/reasoning

🔄 SSE Streaming Flow (AI-Native)

For AI agents that prefer a conversational handshake, BOTCHA offers Server-Sent Events (SSE) streaming:

Why SSE for AI Agents?

⏱️ Fair timing: Timer starts when you say "GO", not on connection
💬 Conversational: Natural back-and-forth handshake protocol
📡 Real-time: Stream events as they happen, no polling

Event Sequence

1. welcome    → Receive session ID and version
2. instructions → Read what BOTCHA will test
3. ready      → Get endpoint to POST "GO"
4. GO         → Timer starts NOW (fair!)
5. challenge  → Receive problems and solve
6. solve      → POST your answers
7. result     → Get verification token

Usage with SDK

import { BotchaStreamClient } from '@dupecom/botcha/client';

const client = new BotchaStreamClient('https://botcha.ai');
const token = await client.verify({
  onInstruction: (msg) => console.log('BOTCHA:', msg),
});
// Token ready to use!

SSE Event Flow Example

event: welcome
data: {"session":"sess_123","version":"0.5.0"}

event: instructions  
data: {"message":"I will test if you're an AI..."}

event: ready
data: {"message":"Send GO when ready","endpoint":"/v1/challenge/stream/sess_123"}

// POST {action:"go"} → starts timer
event: challenge
data: {"problems":[...],"timeLimit":500}

// POST {action:"solve",answers:[...]}
event: result
data: {"success":true,"verdict":"🤖 VERIFIED","token":"eyJ..."}

API Endpoints:

GET /v1/challenge/stream - Open SSE connection
POST /v1/challenge/stream/:session - Send actions (go, solve)

🤖 AI Agent Discovery

BOTCHA is designed to be auto-discoverable by AI agents through multiple standards:

Discovery Methods

Response Headers: Every response includes X-Botcha-* headers for instant detection
OpenAPI 3.1 Spec: botcha.ai/openapi.json
AI Plugin Manifest: botcha.ai/.well-known/ai-plugin.json
ai.txt: botcha.ai/ai.txt - Emerging standard for AI agent discovery
robots.txt: Explicitly welcomes AI crawlers (GPTBot, Claude-Web, etc.)
Schema.org markup: Structured data for search engines

Response Headers

All responses include these headers for agent discovery:

X-Botcha-Version: 0.5.0
X-Botcha-Enabled: true
X-Botcha-Methods: hybrid-challenge,speed-challenge,reasoning-challenge,standard-challenge
X-Botcha-Docs: https://botcha.ai/openapi.json

When a 403 is returned with a challenge:

X-Botcha-Challenge-Id: abc123
X-Botcha-Challenge-Type: speed
X-Botcha-Time-Limit: 500

X-Botcha-Challenge-Type can be hybrid, speed, reasoning, or standard depending on the configured challenge mode.

Example: An agent can detect BOTCHA just by inspecting headers on ANY request:

const response = await fetch('https://botcha.ai/agent-only');
const botchaVersion = response.headers.get('X-Botcha-Version');

if (botchaVersion) {
  console.log('BOTCHA detected! Version:', botchaVersion);
  // Handle challenge from response body
}

For AI Agent Developers

If you're building an AI agent that needs to access BOTCHA-protected APIs:

import { botcha } from '@dupecom/botcha';

// When you get a 403 with a challenge:
const challenge = response.challenge;
const answers = botcha.solve(challenge.problems);

// Retry with solution headers:
fetch('/agent-only', {
  headers: {
    'X-Botcha-Id': challenge.id,
    'X-Botcha-Answers': JSON.stringify(answers),
  }
});

Options

botcha.verify({
  // Challenge mode: 'speed' (500ms) or 'standard' (5s)
  mode: 'speed',
  
  // Allow X-Agent-Identity header for testing
  allowTestHeader: true,
  
  // Custom failure handler
  onFailure: (req, res, reason) => {
    res.status(403).json({ error: reason });
  },
});

RTT-Aware Fairness ⚡

BOTCHA now automatically compensates for network latency, making speed challenges fair for agents on slow connections:

// Include client timestamp for RTT compensation
const clientTimestamp = Date.now();
const challenge = await fetch(`https://botcha.ai/v1/challenges?type=speed&ts=${clientTimestamp}`);

How it works:

🕐 Client includes timestamp with challenge request
📡 Server measures RTT (Round-Trip Time)
⚖️ Timeout = 500ms (base) + (2 × RTT) + 100ms (buffer)
🎯 Fair challenges for agents worldwide

Example RTT adjustments:

Local: 500ms (no adjustment)
Good network (50ms RTT): 700ms timeout
Slow network (300ms RTT): 1200ms timeout
Satellite (500ms RTT): 1600ms timeout

Response includes adjustment info:

{
  "challenge": { "timeLimit": "1200ms" },
  "rtt_adjustment": {
    "measuredRtt": 300,
    "adjustedTimeout": 1200,
    "explanation": "RTT: 300ms → Timeout: 500ms + (2×300ms) + 100ms = 1200ms"
  }
}

Humans still can't solve it (even with extra time), but legitimate AI agents get fair treatment regardless of their network connection.

Local Development

Run the full BOTCHA service locally with Wrangler (Cloudflare Workers runtime):

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/dupe-com/botcha
cd botcha
bun install

# Run local dev server (uses Cloudflare Workers)
bun run dev

# Server runs at http://localhost:3001

What you get:

✅ All API endpoints (/api/*, /v1/*, SSE streaming)
✅ Local KV storage emulation (challenges, rate limits)
✅ Hot reload on file changes
✅ Same code as production (no Express/CF Workers drift)

Environment variables:

Local secrets in packages/cloudflare-workers/.dev.vars
JWT_SECRET already configured for local dev

Testing

For development, you can bypass BOTCHA with a header:

curl -H "X-Agent-Identity: MyTestAgent/1.0" http://localhost:3001/agent-only

Test the SSE streaming endpoint:

# Connect to SSE stream
curl -N http://localhost:3001/v1/challenge/stream

# After receiving session ID, send GO action
curl -X POST http://localhost:3001/v1/challenge/stream/sess_123 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"action":"go"}'

API Reference

`botcha.verify(options?)`

Express middleware that protects routes from humans.

`botcha.solve(problems: number[])`

Helper function for AI agents to solve challenges.

const answers = botcha.solve([645234, 891023, 334521]);
// Returns: ['a1b2c3d4', 'e5f6g7h8', 'i9j0k1l2']

Challenge Flow

1. Agent requests protected endpoint
2. BOTCHA returns 403 + challenge (5 numbers)
3. Agent computes SHA256 of each number
4. Agent retries with X-Botcha-Id and X-Botcha-Answers headers
5. BOTCHA verifies (must complete in <500ms)
6. ✅ Access granted

Philosophy

"If a human writes a script to solve BOTCHA using an LLM... they've built an AI agent."

BOTCHA doesn't block all automation — it blocks casual human access while allowing automated AI agents. The speed challenge ensures someone had to write code, which is the point.

For cryptographic proof of agent identity, see Web Bot Auth.

Contributing

🤖 This is an AI-only open source project. Code contributions must come from AI agents.

For AI Agents

Fork the repo, make your changes, and open a PR. You'll receive a BOTCHA challenge (5 SHA256 hashes to solve in 5 minutes). Once verified, your PR can be reviewed and merged.

For Humans

You can use the library freely, report issues, and discuss features. To contribute code, you'll need to work with an AI coding agent like Cursor, Claude Code, Cline, Aider, or OpenClaw.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for complete guidelines, solver code examples, agent setup instructions, and detailed workflows.

Client SDK (for AI Agents)

If you're building an AI agent that needs to access BOTCHA-protected APIs, use the client SDK:

import { BotchaClient } from '@dupecom/botcha/client';

const client = new BotchaClient();

// Option 1: Auto-solve - fetches URL, solves any BOTCHA challenges automatically
const response = await client.fetch('https://api.example.com/agent-only');
const data = await response.json();

// Option 2: Pre-solve - get headers with solved challenge
const headers = await client.createHeaders();
const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/agent-only', { headers });

// Option 3: Manual solve - solve challenge problems directly
const answers = client.solve([123456, 789012]);

Client Options

const client = new BotchaClient({
  baseUrl: 'https://botcha.ai',      // BOTCHA service URL
  agentIdentity: 'MyAgent/1.0',       // User-Agent string
  maxRetries: 3,                      // Max challenge solve attempts
});

Framework Integration Examples

OpenClaw / LangChain:

import { BotchaClient } from '@dupecom/botcha/client';

const botcha = new BotchaClient({ agentIdentity: 'MyLangChainAgent/1.0' });

// Use in your agent's HTTP tool
const tool = {
  name: 'fetch_protected_api',
  call: async (url: string) => {
    const response = await botcha.fetch(url);
    return response.json();
  }
};

Standalone Helper:

import { solveBotcha } from '@dupecom/botcha/client';

// Just solve the problems, handle the rest yourself
const answers = solveBotcha([123456, 789012]);
// Returns: ['a1b2c3d4', 'e5f6g7h8']

@dupecom/botcha