Cloudflare AI Crawl Control adds WAF rule preservation for custom modifications
Source: https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-03-24-waf-rule-preservation/
What changed
A new capability was added to Cloudflare AI Crawl Control: custom modifications made directly in the WAF custom rules editor (e.g., path-based exceptions, extra user agents, additional expression clauses) are now preserved when crawler actions are updated via AI Crawl Control. If the WAF rule expression is modified in a way AI Crawl Control cannot parse, a warning banner appears on the Crawlers page linking to the rule in WAF. Full details at WAF rule management.
Implication
Operators who previously avoided mixing AI Crawl Control with direct WAF rule edits — fearing overwrites — can now safely layer custom WAF expressions (e.g., path allowlists, additional bot UA patterns) on top of AI Crawl Control-managed rules without losing them on the next UI update. This reduces the friction of fine-grained crawler access control within Cloudflare’s ecosystem.