How Cloudflare handles this workflow
Creates a new DNS record within a zone, requiring the record type, name, content, and TTL, plus a proxied flag that determines whether Cloudflare's network sits in front of the record (orange-clouded) or the DNS simply resolves straight to the origin (grey-clouded, DNS-only).
Request behavior and expectations
When proxied is true, TTL is effectively forced to Cloudflare's automatic setting regardless of what's requested, since proxied records don't expose a user-configurable TTL the way DNS-only records do.
Implementation details
Only proxied records get Cloudflare's CDN caching, DDoS protection, and WAF; a record created as DNS-only skips all of that and just answers DNS queries pointing at the origin.
Use cases
Commonly used to automate domain configuration in deployments and migrations.
- Automate DNS onboarding for new services in Cloudflare.
- Provision temporary records during feature flags or blue-green deployments.
- Populate DNS records from an external inventory source.
- Synchronize DNS with CI/CD promotion steps.