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Why AI agents shouldn't scrape websites and what to do instead

DEV Community·Naxir·about 1 month ago
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Every AI agent that browses a website today receives the same thing a human does: HTML. Navigation bars. Cookie consent modals. Ad banners. Dropdown menus. The agent has to parse all of that noise, figure out which DOM elements represent actual actions, and hope the structure doesn't change next week. This is the wrong abstraction. The data and operations the agent needs are already on the server — they're just wrapped in presentation logic meant for human eyes. The problem, concretely Say an agent needs to order food from a delivery app. Here's what it gets today: <div class= "restaurant-card" data-id= "r-182" > <h2 class= "name" > Pizza Palace </h2> <button class= "cta" onclick= "addToCart(182)" > Order now </button> </div> Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The agent needs to: Find all restaurant cards in the DOM Parse text to extract names and IDs Identify the right button to click Handle JavaScript events Repeat for every page it navigates to And this breaks…

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