diff --git a/routes/corpus-gather.ts b/routes/corpus-gather.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e514ff3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/routes/corpus-gather.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+/**
+ * Corpus Gather — browser-based web crawling.
+ *
+ * This module is stubbed in the cloud (Fly.io) deployment.
+ * Browser crawling runs on the dedicated Hetzner worker (wellspring-builder)
+ * which has Chromium installed. Deploy corpus-gather as a separate worker
+ * service with playwright-core and point it at the same DATABASE_URL.
+ *
+ * To run locally with full capability: NODE_ENV=development tsx routes/corpus-gather-worker.ts
+ */
+import type { Express } from "express";
+
+const WORKER_URL = process.env.CORPUS_GATHER_WORKER_URL || null;
+
+export function registerCorpusGatherRoutes(app: Express) {
+  app.all("/api/corpus/gather*", async (req: any, res: any) => {
+    if (WORKER_URL) {
+      try {
+        const upstream = await fetch(`${WORKER_URL}${req.path}`, {
+          method: req.method,
+          headers: { "content-type": "application/json", "authorization": req.headers.authorization || "" },
+          body: ["GET", "HEAD"].includes(req.method) ? undefined : JSON.stringify(req.body),
+        });
+        const data = await upstream.json();
+        return res.status(upstream.status).json(data);
+      } catch (e: any) {
+        return res.status(502).json({ error: "corpus-gather-worker unreachable", detail: e.message });
+      }
+    }
+    res.status(503).json({
+      error: "corpus-gather-worker not configured",
+      hint: "Set CORPUS_GATHER_WORKER_URL to the Hetzner worker URL, or run corpus-gather-worker.ts locally.",
+    });
+  });
+}