# Bot Hound — Full Documentation

> AI-powered X audience verification — check if any account's followers are real.

Need to know if an X account's followers are real? Bot Hound's Bot Check audits any public X (Twitter) account's audience for bots and fake followers. Enter a username, pick a sample size and scan depth, and get a detailed, shareable report breaking down real followers, suspect accounts, and bots. The AI reads tweets, analyzes avatars, and detects impersonators — going beyond rigid rules to catch sophisticated fakes that simple heuristics miss.

## Use Cases

- **KOL vetting (crypto/web3)**: verify a KOL's real audience before paying for promotion
- **Brand audience audits**: check your own account's followers to understand real reach
- **Influencer due diligence**: verify influencer audiences before signing partnership contracts
- **Competitive intelligence**: benchmark competitor audience quality
- **Journalist fact-checking**: verify follower claims for public figures and organizations
- **Investor due diligence**: assess audience authenticity for social-media-dependent businesses

## How It Works

1. Enter any public X username
2. Choose sample size and scan depth (you control the cost)
3. AI classifies each sampled follower using tweets, profile data, and behavior
4. Get a detailed, shareable report: real, suspect, and bot breakdown with per-account evidence

## Methodology

Bot Hound uses large language model (LLM) classification to analyze each sampled follower account. Unlike rule-based tools that rely on simple thresholds (e.g., "less than 10 followers = bot"), Bot Hound performs multi-signal analysis:

### Signals Analyzed

- **Tweet content**: the AI reads recent tweets to assess whether posting patterns, language use, and topics are consistent with genuine human activity
- **Posting patterns**: frequency, timing, and regularity of posts — bot accounts often show mechanical posting schedules
- **Avatar and profile images**: perceptual image hashing (dHash) detects copied or stock profile pictures; avatar similarity analysis catches impersonators
- **Follower/following ratios**: extreme ratios can indicate bot behavior, but the AI weighs this alongside other signals rather than using it as a hard threshold
- **Account age and activity**: new accounts with high activity or old accounts with sudden bursts are flagged for closer inspection
- **Bio analysis**: copy-paste bios, keyword stuffing, and suspicious URLs are evaluated in context
- **Username patterns**: randomly generated handles or handles mimicking real accounts are detected

### Classification Output

Each sampled follower receives one of three classifications:

- **Real**: the account shows consistent, genuine human behavior across multiple signals
- **Suspect**: the account has some bot-like characteristics but cannot be conclusively classified
- **Bot**: the account shows strong bot indicators across multiple signals

Each classification includes an evidence summary explaining which signals contributed to the decision.

## Report Contents

A Bot Check report includes:

- **Overall bot rate**: percentage of sampled followers classified as bots
- **Audience breakdown**: real, suspect, and bot percentages displayed as a visual bar chart
- **Per-follower classifications**: each sampled follower listed with their classification (real/suspect/bot) and confidence level
- **Evidence summaries**: plain-language explanations of why each account was classified the way it was
- **Impersonation alerts**: accounts that appear to be copying the target account's avatar, username, or bio
- **Sample metadata**: sample size, scan depth, and processing time for transparency

Reports are shareable via a unique URL — send the link to your team or clients.

## Why Bot Hound

- **AI classification, not rigid rules**: reads tweets, bios, and behavior instead of relying on follower-count thresholds
- **Deep content analysis**: examines tweet text and patterns, not just metadata
- **Impersonation detection**: catches accounts mimicking real users, brands, or public figures
- **Works in any language**: AI handles multilingual accounts without language-specific rulesets
- **Shareable reports**: send results to your team or clients with a link
- **Live progress**: watch the analysis run in real time as followers are classified

### How We're Different from Heuristic Tools

Most bot detection tools use rule-based heuristics: fixed thresholds on follower counts, account age, tweet frequency, or engagement rates. These approaches have two fundamental problems:

1. **False positives**: legitimate new accounts, lurkers, or niche creators often trigger heuristic rules
2. **False negatives**: sophisticated bots are designed to pass heuristic checks — they maintain plausible follower ratios, post at realistic intervals, and have aged accounts

Bot Hound's LLM reads the actual content of tweets and evaluates accounts holistically, the way a human reviewer would — but at scale and in minutes.

## Features

- **Bot Check reports**: audit any public X account's audience on demand
- **Per-report pricing**: pay only for the checks you run, starting at $5
- **Audience quality breakdown**: real, suspect, and bot percentages with per-account evidence
- **AI-powered classification**: large language model analysis, not rigid heuristics
- **Subscriber monitoring**: connect your own X account for continuous scanning with auto-block or review mode
- **Impersonation detection**: username similarity, profile image matching, bio mimicry
- **Real-time dashboard**: watch scan progress as followers are analyzed

## Pricing

- Per-report Bot Check starting at $5 — price scales with sample size and scan depth
- Subscriber monitoring: $5/month or $50/year with 14-day free trial

## API

Coming soon. Programmatic access to Bot Check reports for integration into agency workflows, influencer marketing platforms, and automated vetting pipelines.

## Data and Privacy

- Bot Hound accesses only **public** X data — public profiles, public tweets, and public follower lists
- No X passwords or DMs are accessed
- Report data is stored securely and accessible only to the purchaser and the account owner
- Full privacy policy: https://bot-hound.com/privacy.html
- Permissions explanation: https://bot-hound.com/permissions.html

## Links

- Website: https://bot-hound.com
- Run a Bot Check: https://bot-hound.com/vetting
- Sample Report: https://bot-hound.com/report/sample
- Terms of Service: https://bot-hound.com/tos.html
- Privacy Policy: https://bot-hound.com/privacy.html
- Permissions: https://bot-hound.com/permissions.html