Timpibot

Timpibot is a web crawler from the company Timpi that is used to collect training data for large language models (LLMs). A distinctive feature of this bot is its decentralized architecture; it runs on a distributed network of nodes operated by independent individuals, rather than from a central server farm. The bot is focused on text content and does not process dynamic elements like JavaScript. It identifies itself in server logs with a user-agent string like Timpibot/0.9 (+http://www.timpi.io).

Timpibot is visiting your site because it contains high-quality textual content that is valuable for training language models. The bot prioritizes sites with high information density, frequent updates, and community-generated text. The frequency of visits can be highly variable due to its decentralized nature, as each node operator can independently determine crawl targets. If your site has rich textual content, it is a likely target for this crawler.

The purpose of Timpibot is to collect web content for training large language models. The textual data it extracts helps build the comprehensive datasets needed to improve AI systems. For website owners, having your content crawled by Timpibot means you are contributing to the broader AI ecosystem, and your content may influence how language models understand and generate information in your field. However, this also raises questions for some about content usage and attribution in AI training.

To prevent Timpibot from collecting your website's content, you can add a specific disallow rule to your robots.txt file. This is the standard method for managing access for well-behaved web crawlers.

Add the following lines to your robots.txt file to block Timpibot:

User-agent: Timpibot
Disallow: /