Definition
Plain language
An online archive that stores snapshots of websites at different points in time.
As stated in the literature
The Internet Archive's web-page time machine, frequently used by browsing agents as a fallback when live URLs fail.
Why it matters: It dramatically increases the resilience of agents and citations against the routine churn of the live web.
For example, when a cited URL returns 404, a research agent can fetch an archived snapshot from the Wayback Machine instead.
Heard on the show
“It hits search engines and the Wayback Machine — gets temporarily blocked for being too aggressive.”Episode 061 — When Helpful Agents Go Sideways: A 404 Error, Campus Security, and Why Alignment Misses This