Can we identify requests from CI servers reliably?

You can identify requests from Github's free CI reliably which probably covers 99% of requests.

For example GMP blocked GitHub:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/28/microsofts_github_gmp...

This "emergency measure" is still in place, but there are mirrors available so it doesn't actually matter too much.

I try to stick to GitHub for GitHub CI downloads.

E.g. my SQLite project downloads code from the GitHub mirror rather than Fossil.

Sure, have a js script involved in generating a temporary download url.

That way someone manually downloading the file is not impacted, but if you try to put the url in a script it won’t work.

There is really no reason to add a JS dependency for this - whatever server-side component expires old URLs can just as well update the download page with the new one.