048 — REVIEWED: Wayback CDX access through the existing US machine
Measured 2026-09-05 12:05:53–12:06:14 UTC.

Result: the existing AWS us-east-1 machine can retrieve useful public Wayback CDX index data using ordinary IPv4 HTTPS requests. A positive control returned a real timestamped example.com capture; Ubuntu and macw queries also returned nonempty parsed index rows. Therefore the empty exact-Clawd results in this run are not merely a universal empty-response artifact. They still do not prove absence from every archive, index partition, URL variant or capture status.

Five sequential CDX queries, at least 1.6 seconds between responses and subsequent requests; all HTTP 200, all valid JSON arrays. No authentication, challenge bypass, new infrastructure, origin requests, Wayback capture-body fetches or WARC downloads. Existing authorized SSH was used only to issue fixed public curl -4 requests. No remote private terms or credentials were read. No new resources were provisioned; existing machine charges remain unchanged by this investigation scope.

Coverage and results:
1. example.com exact URL, capture year2026, HTTP200 filter, limit1: one row. This is a positive access control, not a completeness test.
2. paste.ubuntu.org.cn/ URL prefix, capture dates2026-07-01 through2026-08-31, HTTP200 only, collapse=urlkey, limit200: seven rows, four numeric paste URLs and three assets. All numeric IDs precede the current4548081..4552953 survey range.
3. macw.cc matchType=domain, including subdomains such aswww, capture dates2026 throughSeptember3, HTTP200 only, collapse=urlkey, limit100: two rows. Root and an article, no indexed message-wall endpoint in this response.
4–5. Exact post38f6c485-3426-4e09-9e85-89bae75686e5 on clawdchat.cn andclawdchat.ai, same capture-date cutoff, HTTP200 only, limit20 each: zero rows.

Returned capture metadata (index only; capture content UNREVIEWED):
control2026:
  20260101000936 | http://www.example.com/ | HTTP 200 | text/html
ubuntu:
  20260714020836 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/138693 | HTTP 200 | text/html
  20260806045429 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/2522971 | HTTP 200 | text/html
  20260806045616 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/2525559 | HTTP 200 | text/html
  20260806045725 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/2525810 | HTTP 200 | text/html
  20260806144156 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/cdn-cgi/scripts/5c5dd728/cloudflare-static/email-decode.min.js | HTTP 200 | application/javascript
  20260715224633 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/favicon.ico | HTTP 200 | image/x-icon
  20260715224631 | https://paste.ubuntu.org.cn/jscript.js | HTTP 200 | application/x-javascript
macw_domain:
  20260314235000 | https://macw.cc/ | HTTP 200 | text/html
  20260124151145 | https://www.macw.cc/articles/158 | HTTP 200 | text/html

The timestamp strings above are archive capture-index timestamps (YYYYMMDDhhmmss), not paste author dates. URL-key collapsing retains one selected record per canonical URL key and suppresses other captures. The returned counts are below their query caps, but filters, canonicalization, capture availability and indexing limitations still apply. Exact-post queries do not test every trailing-slash/query variant. A page captured in August can contain a much older paste; the four low-numbered Ubuntu URLs are therefore not evidence of the July2026 posting cluster.

Concrete next access plan: reuse the existing US machine for bounded CDX queries and, where useful, individual archive capture-body retrievals. The four historical Ubuntu IDs are available for ordinary-use comparison; the macw root/article captures may document historical site identity but are not message-wall records. No returned row here independently dates the xz cluster or the Clawd comment. Treat US egress as a demonstrated improvement for this archive endpoint, not as general access to blocked Chinese services. The earlier ten-site comparison032 found mostly matching blocks/usability across the two machines.

Reproducibility and evidence: 048-wayback-followup.py contains fixed query manifests and SSH curl arguments. Private full response metadata including exact query URLs and raw hashes:048-archive-vantage/followup-metadata-private.json. Five response bodies:followup-*.raw, all mode0600. Existing root probe metadata.json/us-wayback.raw was preserved. No payload or secret values are included in this report.

Primary index endpoint: https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx
Positive control query: https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=example.com%2F&matchType=exact&from=2026&to=2026&limit=1&output=json&fl=timestamp%2Coriginal%2Cstatuscode%2Cmimetype%2Cdigest&filter=statuscode%3A200