What do policy result metrics mean?

[Libertie]

Just installed Anubis a couple days ago and it's working great! I'd love help understanding what some of the metrics mean. For example, here is some of what we're seeing when we curl metrics:

# HELP anubis_challenges_issued The total number of challenges issued
# TYPE anubis_challenges_issued counter
anubis_challenges_issued 0

# HELP anubis_challenges_validated The total number of challenges validated
# TYPE anubis_challenges_validated counter
anubis_challenges_validated 356

# HELP anubis_failed_validations The total number of failed validations
# TYPE anubis_failed_validations counter
anubis_failed_validations 109

# HELP anubis_policy_results The results of each policy rule
# TYPE anubis_policy_results counter
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/bingbot"} 9705
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/duckduckbot"} 22
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/favicon"} 478
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/googlebot"} 8456
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/internet-archive"} 46
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/mojeekbot"} 34
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/robots-txt"} 455
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/sitemap"} 17
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="bot/well-known"} 51
anubis_policy_results{action="ALLOW",rule="default/allow"} 2005
anubis_policy_results{action="CHALLENGE",rule="bot/challenge-aggressive-brazilian-scrapers"} 152
anubis_policy_results{action="CHALLENGE",rule="bot/generic-browser"} 162756
anubis_policy_results{action="DENY",rule="bot/ai-robots-txt"} 55463
anubis_policy_results{action="DENY",rule="bot/cloudflare-workers"} 9
anubis_policy_results{action="DENY",rule="bot/deny-aggressive-brazilian-scrapers"} 28
anubis_policy_results{action="DENY",rule="bot/headless-chrome"} 5

How are policy results being counted? For instance, does "bot/generic-browser" represent unique agents, or does it include subsequent, unchallenged page visits by humans who pass initial validation?

Thanks for the great work on this program!

[kdkasad]

For instance, does "bot/generic-browser" represent unique agents, or does it include subsequent, unchallenged page visits by humans who pass initial validation?

The latter.

Here is where the counter is defined:

anubis/lib/policy/policy.go

Lines 15 to 18 in 086f43e

	Applications = promauto.NewCounterVec(prometheus.CounterOpts{
	Name: "anubis_policy_results",
	Help: "The results of each policy rule",
	}, []string{"rule", "action"})

And here, inside of maybeReverseProxy(), it gets incremented, before checking if the request passes the selected policy.

anubis/lib/anubis.go

Line 115 in 086f43e

policy.Applications.WithLabelValues(cr.Name, string(cr.Rule)).Add(1)

Thus it will be incremented for every received request, not just the initial challenge-response "handshake."