What it is

The GiftBetter Agent is automated software operated by GiftBetter, Inc. that completes gift-card purchases at the online checkouts of local merchants who have chosen to sell through GiftBetter.

When a customer buys a gift card on giftbetter.com for a merchant whose gift-card provider offers no integration API, the agent visits that merchant’s own checkout page and places the order on the customer’s behalf. Each purchase is initiated by a different GiftBetter customer; the agent is the mechanism, not the buyer.

How it identifies itself

The agent never disguises itself. Every request it makes:

• carries the User-Agent giftbetter-agent;
• is cryptographically signed under Web Bot Auth (RFC 9421 HTTP Message Signatures) with an Ed25519 key whose public half is published at https://giftbetter.com/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory;
• names https://giftbetter.com in its Signature-Agent header, so any site can verify the signature and know the request is ours.

A site that does not want the agent can block it by that signature or by its User-Agent, and the agent will not try to get around a block.

Where it operates

Only on the checkout pages of merchants who have expressly authorized GiftBetter. A merchant authorizes us by joining GiftBetter, providing their gift-card checkout page, and setting up the GiftBetter-issued promotional code at their register. The agent keeps that list and refuses any page not on it.

The agent’s first provider is Toast gift-card checkouts (order.toasttab.com/egiftcards/…). It is built to add other gift-card providers and merchant-owned checkout domains under the same merchant-authorization rule.

How it behaves

• It reads and obeys robots.txt on every site it visits.
• It keeps its request rate low: it is placing a handful of orders, not crawling.
• It stops at any block, challenge or refusal and does not retry around it.
• It spends money only for a real customer order, only at an authorized merchant, and applies only the promotional code that merchant set up for GiftBetter.
• It collects nothing from a page beyond what is needed to complete and confirm the order.

Contact

Questions about the agent, or a request that it stop visiting your site: support@giftbetter.com.