---
title: "Shield Features"
description: "Invisible verification, a 1–100 humanity score, proof-of-work challenges in a Web Worker, and privacy by architecture. Every Edge Shield feature in detail."
url: https://edge.network/shield/features/
---

# Shield Features

[Shield](https://edge.network/shield)

Shield

# Features

Invisible verification, a humanity score your server can act on, and privacy guaranteed by architecture rather than policy — with none of the puzzles.

## Three widget modes

Managed mode adapts to the traffic: real users verify invisibly, while suspicious traffic gets a single "I am human" click backed by a harder challenge. Non-interactive and invisible modes never ask for anything.

Whatever the mode, no visitor ever labels traffic lights, transcribes text, or slides a puzzle piece. The interactive fallback is one click — and most of your users will never see it.

### Capabilities

Managed: invisible for humans, one-click confirm for suspicious traffic
Non-Interactive: background verification with a subtle status badge
Invisible: no visible widget at all — verify on load or on demand
Per-widget mode configuration from the dashboard
Automatic token refresh before expiry
Explicit JavaScript API for SPAs (render, execute, reset)

## Proof-of-work, not proof-of-patience

Shield issues a cryptographically signed challenge that the browser solves in a background Web Worker — tens of milliseconds on a phone, invisible to the user, and free of any impact on your Core Web Vitals.

Difficulty adapts to risk. A clean browser gets a trivial challenge; automation gets exponentially more expensive work. Bots pay in compute, humans pay nothing.

### Capabilities

SHA-256 proof-of-work solved in a Web Worker
Adaptive difficulty driven by risk signals
Stateless, HMAC-signed challenges — built for edge delivery
Headless browser and automation-framework detection
Solve-time plausibility analysis
Rotating challenges with anti-replay enforcement

## The humanity score

Turnstile tells you pass or fail. Shield tells you how confident it is: every verification carries a 1–100 score, where 1 is confirmed automation and 100 a confirmed human.

That granularity is yours to use. Auto-approve signups above 80, require email confirmation between 40 and 80, and below 40 choose what fits: block outright, or redirect legitimate automation to your API or agent endpoint. In a world where AI agents act for real customers, "not human" and "not welcome" are different things — thresholds and outcomes are tuned to your traffic, not ours.

Returned on every successful siteverify call
1 = confirmed automation, 100 = confirmed human
Act on it: allow, step up, redirect to your API, review, or block
Automation is a signal, not a verdict — good agents can be routed, not refused
Average score tracked per widget in analytics
Versioned feature schema — scoring improves without integration changes

### // siteverify response

{

"success" : true ,

"score" : 96 ,

"challenge_ts" : "2026-07-19T13:00:00Z" ,

"hostname" : "example.com" ,

"error-codes" : []

}

96 / 100
Confident human — auto-approve

55 / 100
Uncertain — step up to email confirmation

8 / 100
Automation — block, or redirect to your API

## Privacy by architecture

Most verification products promise not to misuse the data they collect. Shield doesn't collect it. Signals are scored in memory during the request and discarded; the only thing that touches a disk is hourly counters.

That means no cookie banners triggered by your bot protection, no data processing agreements for visitor data we don't hold, and no fingerprint database to breach.

### Guarantees

No cookies or local storage
No fingerprint database
No per-visitor records — only hourly aggregate counters
Signals scored in memory, then discarded
Open-source client widget
GDPR / CCPA friendly by default

## Integration & migration

Built to slot into your existing stack — and to make leaving your current CAPTCHA provider a one-line change.

### One snippet, any stack

A script tag and a div. The widget auto-renders, appends a hidden form field, and works with plain HTML, React, Vue, or any SPA.

### Turnstile-compatible siteverify

The response body matches Turnstile's exactly — success, challenge_ts, hostname, error-codes — plus our score field. Existing server code just works.

### Sitekey + secret model

The key model you already know from Turnstile and reCAPTCHA. Secrets are hashed at rest and shown exactly once.

### Hostname allowlists

Lock each widget to specific hostnames. Tokens minted elsewhere fail validation automatically.

### WCAG 2.2 AA

No puzzles means no accessibility trade-off. The rare interactive confirmation is a real button with full ARIA support and keyboard navigation.

### Isolated infrastructure

Shield runs on dedicated infrastructure at shield.edge.network. Your verification traffic never mixes with — or depends on — anything else.

## Analytics dashboard

Everything you need to understand your traffic — and nothing that would compromise your visitors.

### Challenge metrics

Issuance and solve rates per widget, hour by hour. See exactly how much traffic Shield is processing.

### Score distribution

Average humanity score over time. A sudden drop is your early warning of a bot campaign.

### Block & escalation insight

How often traffic was escalated to an interactive confirmation, failed verification, or attempted token replay.

### Privacy-safe by construction

All analytics are hourly aggregates. There is no per-visitor drill-down because there is no per-visitor data.

## Protection your users will never notice

Add Shield to your site in under five minutes. Free forever, no credit card required.

[Get Your Sitekey](https://edge.network/account)