Documentation
Autopilot
Autopilot applies fixes without asking you each time. It ships switched off, and that is deliberate.
What Autopilot is
On a schedule, Crawlix scans your site, generates fixes, and applies the ones that clear three independent checks. Anything failing any check is queued for your review instead.
Autopilot is disabled and paused by default. Automatic changes to a live website are a decision you make, not a default you discover after the fact.
Worth knowing
Autopilot requires a verified domain. Without verification it will not make automatic changes at all.
The three checks
- The allowlist. A fix type must be explicitly listed as safe. Anything not on the list is refused, so new fix types are blocked by default rather than automatically trusted
- The risk check. Each proposed change is scored on its type, how much it changes, and whether it removes anything. Above the threshold it goes to review even if the type is allowlisted
- Confidence. Each fix carries a confidence score compared against your threshold, which defaults to 0.85. Below it, the fix waits for you
The threshold is calibrated against measured outcomes — whether that fix type actually improved things before, on real sites — and it is capped so it cannot widen without evidence.
What Autopilot can safely change
These are additive or low blast radius. They add machine-readable information or adjust presentation. None changes which URL is authoritative, which pages get indexed, or what your page says in prose.
| Category | Fix types |
|---|---|
| Metadata | Title, meta description, Open Graph |
| Images | Alt text, alt-text generation, lazy loading, LCP preload |
| Schema | Schema, FAQ, HowTo, Speakable, Image, Video, Audio, entity, E-E-A-T signals |
| Product | Product schema, price, availability, SKU, brand, GTIN |
| AI readability | llms.txt, citation content, author entity bio, content versioning headers, training-cutoff notice, LLM opt-out header |
| Performance | Render-blocking resources |
| Security | Security headers |
Titles and meta descriptions are on this list, but the risk check rates them higher than schema and sends drastic rewrites to review. They are what a searcher sees, so treat automation there as a convenience you supervise.
What always requires your review
Autopilot will propose these but never apply them on its own.
| Fix type | Why |
|---|---|
| H1 heading | The page’s main heading — a wrong one changes what the page is about |
| Internal links | Link patterns are hard to unpick once wrong |
| robots.txt | One wrong line can remove a site from search |
| Direct answer blocks | Inserts prose that asserts something |
| Media sitemap | Structural |
| LocalBusiness schema, address, phone, hours, geo | Facts about a real business. Wrong opening hours or a wrong phone number is a customer problem, not an SEO one |
| Product reviews | Review markup carries legal and policy weight |
| Twitter cards | Presentation on a third-party surface |
What Autopilot will never change automatically
| Change | Why |
|---|---|
| Body content — any rewrite, expansion or refresh | No content fix type is on the auto-apply allowlist, by design. A fabricated claim published on your domain is your publication, under your name |
| Canonical tags | Rated critical by the risk check, so Autopilot always routes them to review. A wrong canonical silently removes pages from search |
| Sitemap changes | Same critical rating |
| Redirects | Not an automated fix type at all |
| Indexation decisions | What should be indexed is a business decision |
| Major restructuring | Not automated |
Autopilot also cannot act on an unverified domain, and cannot touch anything outside the domain you verified.
How to enable Autopilot
- Verify your domain — required
- Open Autopilot for the project
- Choose a mode. Review all proposes everything and applies nothing — start here. Auto applies fixes that clear all three checks
- Set your auto-approve threshold. Higher is more conservative. Default 0.85
- Choose notifications — on apply, and on new issues
- Unpause
A rollout that will not scare you
- Weeks 1–2: review-all. See what it would do, without it doing anything
- Week 3: auto, threshold 0.9. Watch every change
- Month 2: consider 0.85 if your change history says its fixes are landing well
Worth knowing
Notification emails depend on email being configured on your plan. Autopilot still works without them — you just have to check the dashboard yourself.
How to pause it
One control, effective immediately. Pausing does not revert past changes — use the change history to revert individually, in bulk, or all changes on one page.
Reviewing what Autopilot did
Every automatic change appears in your change history with the fix, its confidence, the method that delivered it, what Crawlix predicted, and the verdict once the measurement window closes.
Look for changes you did not expect, low-confidence applies, and anything on a commercially important page. Revert anything you disagree with.
When not to use Autopilot
Be careful here
- On a site you have not scanned and reviewed manually at least once
- On a client's site without their explicit written consent
- During a migration, redesign or replatform
- On a site with no backup or version control
- When you will not be able to check the results for a while — automation you do not supervise is just unattended change