Governance checks FAQ

How often do checks run? Every plan includes one automatic first-check opportunity after verification; check the displayed status rather than expecting immediate completion. Free has no recurring monitoring, and you can run a check manually. Starter's plan interval is weekly, Pro daily, Scale every 12 hours, Agency every 6 hours and Enterprise hourly. Editors and Admins can run a check manually. See Check scheduling.

Why is my score low? Open the artefact and read the findings and their score treatment. Warnings and Information are score-neutral; Issues and Recommendations may deduct. A required artefact that is missing contributes zero to the Site score, while blocked or errored evidence can make the score unavailable, and a recommended artefact that is missing is left out of the composite.

Why does the score show "—"? Either no run has completed yet, or the Site is unscorable because a required artefact was blocked, typically by a firewall or bot challenge. Allow Flowpane's crawler through and run the check again.

Can Flowpane check sites behind a login? No. Flowpane fetches files as a public visitor over HTTPS. Pages behind authentication cannot be checked.

What user agent does Flowpane use? Governance checks are fetched as Flowpane/1.0 (+https://crawler.flowpane.com). Requests are also cryptographically signed using the Web Bot Auth standard, so services that verify bot signatures can confirm the request came from Flowpane. If a site returns a 403 to that identity, Flowpane retries once with a conventional browser-style user agent to distinguish a bot block from a genuinely missing file. Sitemap crawls use Flowpane/1.0 (+https://crawler.flowpane.com).

Does a check change my website? Checks observe public evidence. Preparing a Proposed draft does not itself change the website. Publishing or management requires a separate explicit action and the capabilities available for the connected Site.

What is the difference between "Missing", "Blocked" and "Error"? Missing means the server returned a genuine not-found response. Blocked means a firewall, rate limit or bot challenge prevented Flowpane reading the artefact. Error means the request failed for another reason, such as a timeout. Only Missing is treated as a score of zero; Blocked and Error preserve the previous good result and can make the Site unscorable if the artefact is required.

Why has automatic checking paused for a Site? After repeated fetch failures Flowpane backs off automatic checks with increasing delays and shows an "Auto-checks paused" badge. Running a manual check resets the backoff immediately.