Detect Captcha

When to invoke

Run any time the deterministic recipe of another skill fails on what looks like it should have worked, OR proactively before any step that involves form submission, login, or rate-sensitive interaction. The matcher runs this when known captcha markers appear in the DOM.

This skill is detect-only. It identifies captcha provider, surfaces metadata, and stops. If you need to bypass a captcha, you are out of scope of this project — see docs/ethics.md. PRs adding solving logic will be closed.

Recipe

1. wait_for_dom_ready timeout=3s
2. extract_text selector=".g-recaptcha, .h-captcha, .cf-turnstile, iframe[src*='recaptcha'], iframe[src*='hcaptcha'], iframe[src*='challenges.cloudflare.com']" into="$captcha_marker" optional=true

Success criteria

The skill always returns success if the recipe completes. The interesting state is in the returned extracted map:

• $captcha_marker populated → captcha detected (the value identifies the provider via its container class or iframe URL)
• $captcha_marker not populated → no captcha present

The caller decides what to do next: stop, prompt the user, switch to a non-captcha-protected URL, etc.

When NOT to use

• Never. This skill is cheap, deterministic, and side-effect-free. Always safe to invoke.

Known failures

• Invisible captchas (~15% of reCAPTCHA v3 deployments): the badge is hidden by default. The challenge only appears on risk-flagged sessions. Detection via the .grecaptcha-badge selector covers this case; it's in v0.2.0.
• Custom captcha implementations (~5%): sites running bespoke "click the kittens" challenges won't match standard markers. Vision detection would help but vision fallback is forbidden for this skill (see cost_budget.max_vision_calls: 0).
• Captcha loaded post-interaction: the captcha only renders after a form-submit click. Re-invoke this skill after any submit step.

Example usage

Agent task: "Search for foo on site X and grab the first 3 results."
→ invoke_skill("verify-page-loaded") → success
→ invoke_skill("dismiss-cookie-banner") → success
→ invoke_skill("detect-captcha") → success, $captcha_marker = None
→ invoke_skill("search-and-filter") → success
...vs...
→ invoke_skill("detect-captcha") → success, $captcha_marker = "<reCAPTCHA iframe>"
→ agent: "Site X is showing a reCAPTCHA. I cannot continue automatically. Switch to a different source?"

Ethical posture

This skill exists to make captcha presence visible to the agent so the agent (and the user) can make an informed decision. The decision is not "now solve it." md](../../DECISIONS.md).

Related skills

• verify-page-loaded — captchas often render after page load; run loaded-check first
• detect-rate-limit (v0.2.0) — captchas often appear after rate-limit triggers