Check the status of a running or completed crawl.
AI agents call crawl_status to retrieve information from Screaming Frog without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool queries the status of existing crawls without creating, modifying, deleting, or executing operations. It is a pure read operation that retrieves data about crawl progress/completion state. The low severity reflects minimal blast radius—an AI agent misusing this tool could only retrieve unwanted status information, not cause damage or data loss.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'crawl_status' and description 'Check the status of a running or completed crawl' indicate retrieval of crawl state information with no modification or side effects.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Check the status of a running or completed crawl. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Screaming Frog MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Screaming Frog MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for crawl_status: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Screaming Frog. Nothing to install.
crawl_status is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the crawl_status rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for crawl_status. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
crawl_status is provided by the Screaming Frog MCP server (marykovziridze/screaming-frog-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
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