Angular SSR for bots, prebuilt CSR shell for humans. Faster page loads for users, fully prerendered HTML for Googlebot, Bingbot, Yandex, ClaudeBot, GPTBot and link unfurlers.

Powered by isbot .

Why 

Angular SSR is great for crawlers and great in the readme — but in production, every real user pays for it: SSR HTML arrives, hydrates, and re-renders. Users see a flash, click handlers don't fire until hydration completes, and Time to Interactive is worse than a CSR-only build for sites with any meaningful JS.

Meanwhile, the bots that actually need server-rendered HTML — Googlebot, Bingbot, Yandex, Facebook/Twitter unfurlers, ClaudeBot, GPTBot, PerplexityBot — execute little or no JavaScript. Shipping them the CSR shell means empty meta tags, empty link previews, and weak indexing.

ngx-bot-ssr switches the response based on the User-Agent:

• Real browsers → static index.csr.html shell, Angular bootstraps client-side, no hydration flicker
• Bots / crawlers / unfurlers / missing UA → Angular SSR via AngularNodeAppEngine.handle(), fully prerendered HTML

Sets Vary: User-Agent so any upstream cache (CDN, Varnish, Cloudflare) keeps the two responses separate.

The Angular community has been asking for this for years:

• angular/angular#52360 — "skip Client App Initialization for Google/Bing Crawlers/Bots"
• angular/universal-starter#536 — "Is it possible to use SSR only for bots/crawlers?"

Install 

yarn add ngx-bot-ssr
# or
npm install ngx-bot-ssr

express is a peer dependency. You almost certainly already have it via @angular/ssr.

Usage — Angular SSR (the easy way) 

In your Angular SSR project's src/server.ts, replace the catch-all app.use((req, res, next) => angularApp.handle(req)...) block with angularBotSsr(...). Three lines, no glue code:

import {
  AngularNodeAppEngine,
  createNodeRequestHandler,
  isMainModule,
  writeResponseToNodeResponse,
} from '@angular/ssr/node';
import express from 'express';
import { join } from 'node:path';
import { angularBotSsr } from 'ngx-bot-ssr';

const browserDistFolder = join(import.meta.dirname, '../browser');

const app = express();
const angularApp = new AngularNodeAppEngine();

// Static assets first (CSR JS, images, fonts)
app.use(express.static(browserDistFolder, {
  maxAge: '1y',
  index: false,
  redirect: false,
}));

// Bots → SSR, humans → CSR shell. That's it.
app.use(angularBotSsr({
  browserDistFolder,
  angularApp,
  writeResponseToNodeResponse,
}));

if (isMainModule(import.meta.url) || process.env['pm_id']) {
  const port = process.env['PORT'] || 4000;
  app.listen(port, () => console.log(`listening on http://localhost:${port}`));
}

export const reqHandler = createNodeRequestHandler(app);

Build with ng build (which already produces index.csr.html), run the SSR server, and:

• curl -H 'User-Agent: Googlebot/2.1' http://localhost:4000/ → fully prerendered Angular HTML
• curl -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (...) Chrome/...' http://localhost:4000/ → CSR shell, ~1 KB

Why pass writeResponseToNodeResponse and angularApp in? @angular/ssr/node is ESM-only, so the package can't require() it from a CJS module. Passing them in keeps ngx-bot-ssr framework-agnostic at the core (Hono, raw Web fetch handlers, etc. all work) while still giving the Angular case a one-call API.

API — angularBotSsr(options) 

const { angularBotSsr } = require('ngx-bot-ssr');
// or: import { angularBotSsr } from 'ngx-bot-ssr';

app.use(angularBotSsr(options));

Option	Required	Description
browserDistFolder		Absolute path to your Angular dist/.../browser/ folder. The CSR shell is read from ${browserDistFolder}/index.csr.html unless shell is set.
angularApp		An AngularNodeAppEngine instance from @angular/ssr/node.
writeResponseToNodeResponse		Imported from @angular/ssr/node.
shell	–	Override the shell path if your CSR file lives elsewhere.
isBot	–	(userAgent: string | undefined) => boolean. Override the default detection.
shellCacheControl	–	Cache-Control header for the CSR shell. Defaults to 'no-cache'.

API — botSsr(options) (low-level, framework-agnostic) 

Use this if you're not on Angular — Hono, plain fetch-style handlers, anything that returns a Web Response works.

const { botSsr } = require('ngx-bot-ssr');

app.use(botSsr({
  shell: '/abs/path/to/index.csr.html',
  ssr: (req) => myEngine.handle(req),         // → Promise<Response | null | undefined>
  writeResponse: (response, res) => { /* serialize Web Response → Node res */ },
  // optional:
  isBot,                // (ua) => boolean
  shellCacheControl,    // string
}));

Option	Required	Description
shell		Absolute path to the CSR shell HTML. Read once at construction (boot-time sync I/O is fine).
ssr		(req) => Promise<Response | null | undefined>. Returning null/undefined calls next().
writeResponse		(response, res) => void. Serializes the Web Response into the Node res.
isBot	–	(userAgent) => boolean. Default uses isbot and treats missing UAs as bots.
shellCacheControl	–	Default 'no-cache'.

How it works 

                  request
                     │
                     ▼
        ┌────────────────────────┐
        │ Vary: User-Agent       │
        └────────────────────────┘
                     │
            isBot(req.UA)?
              ┌──────┴──────┐
              │             │
            true           false
              │             │
              ▼             ▼
        options.ssr     send shell
              │       (read once
              ▼        at boot)
       Response | null
              │
       ┌──────┴──────┐
       │             │
   Response       null/undef
       │             │
       ▼             ▼
 writeResponse    next()

Treats missing UAs as bots — safer to prerender than to ship the CSR shell to an unknown client.

Reference reading 

• Adnan Ebrahimi — switch SSR/CSR by user agent
• baunov gist
• dsimmons on Medium — Frustrated with Angular Universal SSR
• Infinum handbook — robots and sitemap

Credits 

• isbot by Omri Lotan — the bot detection library this package wraps. Updated continuously, covers the long tail of crawlers, AI bots, and link unfurlers.
• Pattern originally extracted from corifeus-app-web-pages .

Meet Assistant SaaS — meeting.corifeus.com 

Don't want to install anything? Try the hosted version at meeting.corifeus.com — full meeting workflow built for European businesses, no setup, no API key, no command line.

What the hosted version offers:

• 21-language live translation during the meeting
• AI summaries, action items, decisions, attendees, key quotes auto-generated after every meeting
• Custom vocabulary — your client / company / industry terms corrected automatically (Pro+ tier)
• Searchable meeting library — find any decision or promise across all your past meetings
• Shareable read-only links — send a clean meeting summary to a client or teammate, no signup needed on their end
• One-click email summary after each meeting
• Premium engine on every plan — no downgraded model, ever
• EU billing — Stripe Tax + VAT-compliant + EUR-priced (Solo €19.99 / Pro €39.99 / Business €99.99 per month, no lock-in)
• GDPR-compliant by default — browser-language auto-detection, no tracking cookies, your meetings stored encrypted

Try the live demo (1 minute free, no signup) or browse the public sample meeting at meeting.corifeus.com/sample .

Corifeus Network 

AI-powered network & email toolkit — free, no signup.

Web · network.corifeus.com MCP · npm i -g p3x-network-mcp

• AI Network Assistant — ask in plain language, get a full domain health report
• Network Audit — DNS, SSL, security headers, DNSBL, BGP, IPv6, geolocation in one call
• Diagnostics — DNS lookup & global propagation, WHOIS, reverse DNS, HTTP check, my-IP
• Mail Tester — live SPF/DKIM/DMARC + spam score + AI fix suggestions, results emailed (localized)
• Monitoring — TCP / HTTP / Ping with alerts and public status pages
• MCP server — 17 tools exposed to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, any MCP client
• Install — claude mcp add p3x-network -- npx p3x-network-mcp
• Try — "audit example.com", "why do my emails land in spam? test me@example.com "
• Source — patrikx3/network · patrikx3/network-mcp
• Contact — patrikx3.com · donate

Support Our Open-Source Project 

If you appreciate our work, consider starring this repository or making a donation to support server maintenance and ongoing development. Your support means the world to us—thank you!

About My Domains 

All my domains, including patrikx3.com , corifeus.eu , and corifeus.com, are developed in my spare time. While you may encounter minor errors, the sites are generally stable and fully functional.

Versioning Policy 

Version Structure: We follow a Major.Minor.Patch versioning scheme:

• Major: Corresponds to the current year.
• Minor: Set as 4 for releases from January to June, and 10 for July to December.
• Patch: Incremental, updated with each build.

Important Changes: Any breaking changes are prominently noted in the readme to keep you informed.

NGX-BOT-SSR Build v2026.4.106