Field notes from the world of data extraction.
Articles, interviews and analysis on how data is gathered, used and fought over — written by the people closest to it.
uv Python cheatsheet: what changed in 0.12 and what still trips you up
uv 0.12 changed several defaults that Python developers rely on—from how `uv init` structures projects to how hash checking and lockfiles behave. This practical cheatsheet tests the differences across versions and highlights the command-line traps most likely to surprise you.
Firewalls run the web, just not on purpose
Web Application Firewalls run on 92.4% of the top websites, but most arrived bundled with a CDN and were never tuned to resist automated access.
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Give your AI agent a browser: search, compare, and check product availability with Zyte CDP
What if your AI agent could use a real browser to search, click, compare products, and collect data, without you writing a selector for every step? By connecting it to a remote Zyte CDP browser, you can turn plain-language instructions into practical browser automation.
The page your agent scrapes is now an attack surface. Is it ready for the hostile web?
Real web is becoming hostile for AI Agents. The page your agent scrapes now could be a potential attack surface. Read more and join Zyte's virtual meet-up to see it in action.
Running Playwright at scale: connecting to the Zyte CDP browser
We've released our CDP Browser, ideal for those with existing Playwright scripts looking for better access, as well as developers who need granular control over a browser, but don't want the hassle of running locally.
Four in 10 sites block AI bots with robots.txt
Nearly four in 10 of the world's top sites are now closed to well-behaved AI crawlers. Here's what operators actually do with robots.txt, and which AI agents they block or welcome.
Fable 5.1 shipped, and GLM-5.3-Flash turned out to be someone I already met
A personal take on Claude Fable 5.1 and GLM-5.3-Flash: real benchmarks, a live extraction test, and the model I guessed before Zhipu confirmed it.
Web data in a reactive notebook: an introduction to marimo
marimo is a reactive Python notebook that reruns only affected cells. Learn to scrape web data with Zyte API, chart prices, and cache costly API calls.
75% of the web uses robots.txt - here's how
Three in four of the world's top sites publish a robots.txt, yet few name individual crawlers. A look inside the web's advisory layer: coverage, sophistication and limits.
Introducing Zyte CDP support: Your browser automation, our infrastructure
Want to use traditional browser automation frameworks without infrastructure headaches? Tap our new CDP support to run scripts on Zyte’s powerful infrastructure.
Why Europe’s new AI scraping guidelines miss the mark
New guidelines on generative AI scraping aim to protect user privacy. But turning a rudimentary, 30-year-old web server standard into a legal barrier will disenfranchise users and create accidental monopolies.
WebFetch is ‘lossy’ by design: give your coding agent a better fetch in one command
Your coding agent built-in webfetch tool is not the best and it's hampering your research and coding workflows, fix it with one CLI tool and never face blocks again.