diff --git a/.wip/tasks/draft-protect-quote-wire-crawlers.md b/.wip/tasks/draft-protect-quote-wire-crawlers.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed505d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.wip/tasks/draft-protect-quote-wire-crawlers.md
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+status: draft
+---
+
+# Protect the quote wire from crawler loops
+
+## Problem
+
+The Elsewhere quote wire creates procedural journey URLs with query parameters. After
+release, ClaudeBot and OpenAI crawlers followed the quote wire deeply enough to burn
+through the Cloudflare Workers allotment.
+
+The site should still expose the quote index and clean quote pages for normal discovery,
+but crawlers should not be invited into the infinite-looking journey space.
+
+## Proposed solution
+
+Keep the public quote index crawlable while making the procedural journey URLs
+crawler-hostile and budget-safe. Clean archive and quote URLs should remain available, but
+query-state journey URLs should not be indexed or followed.
+
+Start with a repo-level fix before adding Cloudflare custom rules. Robots directives
+should explicitly keep crawlers out of `/elsewhere/quotes/*?*`, with specific handling for
+ClaudeBot and OpenAI crawlers where useful. Journey links should signal `nofollow`, and
+journey pages should keep canonical URLs pointed at their clean quote path.
+
+Cloudflare-side protection should remain a fallback if robots directives and link hints do
+not reduce abusive crawler traffic enough.
+
+## Requirements
+
+- `/elsewhere/quotes`, `/elsewhere/quotes/archive`, and clean `/elsewhere/quotes/{slug}`
+  pages should remain accessible.
+- Procedural journey URLs with query parameters should be disallowed for crawlers.
+- Journey continuation links should use `rel="nofollow"`.
+- Journey pages should remain `noindex, nofollow` and canonicalize to the clean quote URL.
+- ClaudeBot and OpenAI crawler traffic should be handled explicitly in robots directives.
+- Do not add Cloudflare custom rules unless the repo-level crawl controls prove
+  insufficient.
+- The first fix may rely on crawler politeness, but it should leave a clear escalation
+  path for Worker budget protection.
diff --git a/src/elsewhere/quotes/QuotePage.astro b/src/elsewhere/quotes/QuotePage.astro
index f46e665..ab7056f 100644
--- a/src/elsewhere/quotes/QuotePage.astro
+++ b/src/elsewhere/quotes/QuotePage.astro
@@ -70,6 +70,7 @@ const { Content } = quote;
             <a
               class={`quote-path quote-path--${index}`}
               href={door.href}
+              rel="nofollow"
               data-journey-focus={index === 0 ? true : undefined}
             >
               {doorWords[index]}
diff --git a/src/pages/robots.txt.ts b/src/pages/robots.txt.ts
index 16ef4c7..8c9ed2b 100644
--- a/src/pages/robots.txt.ts
+++ b/src/pages/robots.txt.ts
@@ -1,7 +1,26 @@
 import { env } from "cloudflare:workers";
 
-const productionRobots = `User-agent: *
+const quoteJourneyDisallow = "Disallow: /elsewhere/quotes/*?*";
+
+const productionRobots = `User-agent: ClaudeBot
+Allow: /
+${quoteJourneyDisallow}
+
+User-agent: GPTBot
+Allow: /
+${quoteJourneyDisallow}
+
+User-agent: ChatGPT-User
+Allow: /
+${quoteJourneyDisallow}
+
+User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
+Allow: /
+${quoteJourneyDisallow}
+
+User-agent: *
 Allow: /
+${quoteJourneyDisallow}
 
 Sitemap: https://johnhooks.io/sitemap.xml
 `;