diff --git a/src/whsk/__init__.py b/src/whsk/__init__.py
index 3fd687b..fb93b40 100644
--- a/src/whsk/__init__.py
+++ b/src/whsk/__init__.py
@@ -8,11 +8,12 @@ from rich.console import Console
 from rich.panel import Panel
 from typing_extensions import Annotated
 from importlib.metadata import version
+from .user_agents import USER_AGENTS
 
 cli = typer.Typer(help="whsk: web harvesting/scraping toolKit")
 
 VERSION = version("whsk")
-_user_agent = f"whsk/{VERSION}"
+_default_user_agent = f"whsk/{VERSION}"
 
 # Common Options
 opt = {
@@ -54,6 +55,21 @@ def make_request(url, *, headers, user_agent, postdata):
         - lxml.etree.Element
     """
     header_dict = parse_headers(headers)
+
+    # user agent either from headers, shortcut, or default
+    if "user-agent" in headers and user_agent:
+        typer.secho("Cannot use --ua shortcut and also pass --header User-Agent")
+        raise typer.Exit(1)
+    elif "user-agent" in header_dict:
+        pass  # make no changes
+    elif not user_agent:
+        header_dict["user-agent"] = _default_user_agent
+    elif user_agent in USER_AGENTS:
+        header_dict["user-agent"] = USER_AGENTS[user_agent]
+    else:
+        typer.secho("--ua shortcut must be one of: " + ", ".join(USER_AGENTS))
+        raise typer.Exit(1)
+
     method = "GET"
     if postdata:
         method = "POST"
@@ -106,7 +122,7 @@ WWWWW H H SS  K K       v{VERSION}
 @cli.command()
 def query(
     url: Annotated[str, typer.Argument(help="URL to scrape")],
-    user_agent: Annotated[str, opt["user_agent"]] = _user_agent,
+    user_agent: Annotated[str, opt["user_agent"]] = "",
     postdata: Annotated[str, opt["postdata"]] = "",
     headers: Annotated[list[str], opt["headers"]] = [],
     css: Annotated[str, opt["css"]] = "",
@@ -132,7 +148,7 @@ def query(
 @cli.command()
 def shell(
     url: Annotated[str, typer.Argument(help="URL to scrape")],
-    user_agent: Annotated[str, opt["user_agent"]] = _user_agent,
+    user_agent: Annotated[str, opt["user_agent"]] = "",
     postdata: Annotated[str, opt["postdata"]] = "",
     headers: Annotated[list[str], opt["headers"]] = [],
     css: Annotated[str, opt["css"]] = "",
diff --git a/src/whsk/user_agents.py b/src/whsk/user_agents.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d45b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/whsk/user_agents.py
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# based on the list from https://www.useragents.me
+USER_AGENTS = {
+    "linux.chrome": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.3",
+    "linux.firefox": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133",
+    "mac.chrome": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.0.0 Safari/537.3",
+    "mac.firefox": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133",
+    "mac.safari": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.6 Safari/605.1.1",
+    "win.chrome": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.3",
+    "win.edge": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/131.0.0.",
+    "win.firefox": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:133.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133",
+}