diff --git a/crates/archivr-core/src/capture.rs b/crates/archivr-core/src/capture.rs
index 507163c..8004537 100644
--- a/crates/archivr-core/src/capture.rs
+++ b/crates/archivr-core/src/capture.rs
@@ -900,14 +900,12 @@ pub fn perform_capture(
             Ok(downloader::http::UrlKind::Html) => source = Source::WebPage,
             Ok(downloader::http::UrlKind::File) => {}
             Err(e) => {
-                // Record a failed item using the pre-probe source_kind so
-                // failed_count increments and the item carries error_text.
-                let (probe_sk, probe_ek, _) = source_metadata(Source::Url);
-                let item = database::create_archive_run_item(
-                    &conn, run.id, None, 0, locator, None, probe_sk, probe_ek,
-                )?;
-                let msg = format!("Failed to probe URL: {e}");
-                return Err(fail_run(&conn, &run, &item, &msg));
+                // Probe failed (e.g. Cloudflare JS challenge, 403, network
+                // issue). Fall back to treating the URL as an HTML page so
+                // that the SingleFile/Chromium path can try — a real browser
+                // can pass bot challenges that a plain HTTP client cannot.
+                eprintln!("warn: probe failed for {locator}, assuming HTML: {e}");
+                source = Source::WebPage;
             }
         }
     }
diff --git a/crates/archivr-core/src/downloader/http.rs b/crates/archivr-core/src/downloader/http.rs
index 282910a..24847d7 100644
--- a/crates/archivr-core/src/downloader/http.rs
+++ b/crates/archivr-core/src/downloader/http.rs
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ pub enum UrlKind {
 pub fn probe_url_kind(url: &str, cookies: &HashMap<String, String>) -> Result<UrlKind> {
     let client = reqwest::blocking::Client::builder()
         .redirect(reqwest::redirect::Policy::limited(10))
-        .user_agent("archivr/0.1")
+        .user_agent("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 archivr/0.1")
         .build()
         .context("failed to build HTTP client")?;
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ pub fn probe_url_kind(url: &str, cookies: &HashMap<String, String>) -> Result<Ur
 pub fn download(url: &str, store_path: &Path, timestamp: &str, cookies: &HashMap<String, String>) -> Result<(String, String, Option<String>)> {
     let client = reqwest::blocking::Client::builder()
         .redirect(reqwest::redirect::Policy::limited(10))
-        .user_agent("archivr/0.1")
+        .user_agent("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 archivr/0.1")
         .build()
         .context("failed to build HTTP client")?;