What is Meta-ExternalTest?
Meta-ExternalTest is a Meta identity for testing external integrations. Its name and description are deliberately narrow: this is test traffic, not a general label for every Meta crawler or agent. Keep the exact token when classifying it.
The directory places Meta-ExternalTest in the Agent and User Initiated categories. That supports treating a request as part of an integration test started for a particular workflow, rather than an autonomous crawl of the open web. The record does not name the integration, its target endpoints, or a request schedule.
A test can still exercise real site behavior. Operators should compare the path, method, and timing with the integration they agreed to test, and should not relax authentication just because the request carries a Meta-looking user agent. Unexpected traffic deserves the same validation as any other automated client.
Nothing in the source record assigns Meta-ExternalTest a search-indexing or model-training function. Blocking this identity does not document an opt-out from Meta AI training, and allowing it does not make a page eligible for AI search. Its recorded effect is limited to whether the external integration test can reach the site.
Cloudflare's bot directory lists the full user agent as meta-externaltest/1.1 and points operators to Meta's crawler documentation. It also publishes a Web Bot Auth directory for this agent at https://www.meta.com/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory. A valid signature is stronger evidence than the lower-case user-agent string, which is easy to copy.
Robots.txt compliance is unknown in the bot metadata, while Cloudflare sets followsRobotsTxt to false. The stable meta-externaltest token is useful for expressing a crawl preference, but the signature is the better basis for a hard allow or deny decision. this bot does not mark the bot's IPs as verified.
