robots.txt: stop Googlebot crawling versioned Mintlify asset chunks - #785
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Mintlify's default robots.txt disallows /_next/ but serves its build assets under /mintlify-assets/_next/, which the prefix rule does not cover. Every redeploy mints new deployment-versioned chunk URLs (...js?dpl=...) and kills the old ones, so Googlebot crawls a rolling population of dead JS files. GSC's "Not found (404)" bucket doubled from ~1.1K to 2.17K around 2026-07-19 to 07-30 from exactly these URLs, burying the real page-404 signal that #738 fixed. Reproduces the live default verbatim (Content-Signal line, /cdn-cgi/ block, /_next/image allowance, sitemap) and adds the same pattern one directory deeper: allow /mintlify-assets/_next/image, disallow /mintlify-assets/_next/. Page content, llms.txt, and AI-assistant access are unaffected.
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emmett-fear
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Aug 14, 2026
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Follow-up to #738.
Why
The GSC "Not found (404)" bucket on the domain property doubled from ~1.1K to
2.17K between 2026-07-19 and 07-30. The new entries are almost entirely
/mintlify-assets/_next/static/chunks/*.js?dpl=...URLs: deployment-versionedJS chunks that 404 the moment the next Mintlify deploy replaces them. Google
keeps discovering fresh ones, so the report accumulates asset noise forever and
buries the real page 404s that #738's redirects fixed. A fresh validation was
started 2026-08-13; without this change it will keep failing on asset churn
alone.
Why the default robots.txt does not already cover this
The live auto-generated robots.txt disallows
/_next/but Mintlify serves thesame tree under the
/mintlify-assets/prefix, and robots rules are pureprefix matches, so
/mintlify-assets/_next/...is crawlable today.What
Adds a repo-root
robots.txt(Mintlify serves it as-is), reproducing thecurrent live default verbatim and adding the same pattern one directory deeper:
Allow: /mintlify-assets/_next/image(mirrors the existing/_next/imageallowance)Disallow: /mintlify-assets/_next/No page content, sitemap, llms.txt, or AI-assistant access changes. The
existing
Content-Signalline is preserved as-is.Effect
Googlebot stops crawling versioned chunks; the ~1K asset 404s age out of the
report on their own; the 404 report goes back to measuring real pages.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code