webclaw

Turn websites into clean markdown, JSON, and LLM-ready context.
_{CLI, MCP server, REST API, and SDKs for AI agents and RAG pipelines.}

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Most web scraping tools give your agent one of two bad outputs:

• a blocked page, login wall, or empty app shell
• raw HTML full of nav, scripts, styling, ads, and duplicated boilerplate

webclaw.io is the hosted web extraction API for webclaw. This repo contains the open-source CLI, MCP server, extraction engine, and self-hostable server.

webclaw turns a URL into clean content your tools can actually use.

webclaw https://example.com --format markdown

# Example Domain

This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents.

You may use this domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for permission.

Use it from the terminal, wire it into Claude/Cursor through MCP, call the hosted API from your app, or self-host the OSS server.

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Install

Agent setup

The fastest way to connect webclaw to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex CLI, and other MCP-compatible tools:

npx create-webclaw

The installer detects supported clients and configures the MCP server for you.

Homebrew

brew tap 0xMassi/webclaw
brew install webclaw

Prebuilt binaries

Download macOS and Linux binaries from GitHub Releases.

Docker

docker run --rm ghcr.io/0xmassi/webclaw https://example.com

Cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw.git webclaw-cli
cargo install --git https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw.git webclaw-mcp

If building from source fails because native build tools are missing, install the platform prerequisites:

OS	Command
Debian / Ubuntu	sudo apt install -y pkg-config libssl-dev cmake clang git build-essential
Fedora / RHEL	sudo dnf install -y pkg-config openssl-devel cmake clang git make gcc
Arch	sudo pacman -S pkg-config openssl cmake clang git base-devel
macOS	xcode-select --install

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Quick Start

Scrape one page

webclaw https://stripe.com --format markdown

Return LLM-optimized text

webclaw https://docs.anthropic.com --format llm

Keep only the main content

webclaw https://example.com/blog/post --only-main-content

Include or exclude selectors

webclaw https://example.com \
  --include "article, main, .content" \
  --exclude "nav, footer, .sidebar, .ad"

Crawl a documentation site

webclaw https://docs.rust-lang.org --crawl --depth 2 --max-pages 50

Extract brand assets

webclaw https://github.com --brand

Compare a page over time

webclaw https://example.com/pricing --format json > pricing-old.json
webclaw https://example.com/pricing --diff-with pricing-old.json

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MCP Server

webclaw ships with an MCP server for AI agents.

npx create-webclaw

Manual config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webclaw": {
      "command": "~/.webclaw/webclaw-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Then ask your agent things like:

Scrape these competitor pricing pages and summarize the differences.

Crawl this documentation site and prepare clean context for a RAG index.

Extract the brand colors, fonts, and logos from this company website.

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Tools

Tool	What it does	Local
scrape	Extract one URL as markdown, text, JSON, LLM format, or HTML	Yes
crawl	Follow same-origin links and extract discovered pages	Yes
map	Discover URLs without extracting every page	Yes
batch	Scrape multiple URLs in parallel	Yes
extract	Convert page content into structured data	Yes, with local or configured LLM
summarize	Summarize a page	Yes, with local or configured LLM
diff	Compare page content snapshots	Yes
brand	Extract colors, fonts, logos, and metadata	Yes
search	Search the web and scrape results	Hosted API
research	Multi-source research workflow	Hosted API

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SDKs

npm install @webclaw/sdk
pip install webclaw
go get github.com/0xMassi/webclaw-go

TypeScript

import { Webclaw } from "@webclaw/sdk";

const client = new Webclaw({ apiKey: process.env.WEBCLAW_API_KEY! });

const page = await client.scrape({
  url: "https://example.com",
  formats: ["markdown"],
  only_main_content: true,
});

console.log(page.markdown);

Python

from webclaw import Webclaw

client = Webclaw(api_key="wc_your_key")

page = client.scrape(
    "https://example.com",
    formats=["markdown"],
    only_main_content=True,
)

print(page.markdown)

cURL

curl -X POST https://api.webclaw.io/v1/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WEBCLAW_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "formats": ["markdown"],
    "only_main_content": true
  }'

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Output Formats

Format	Use it when you need
markdown	Clean page content with structure preserved
llm	Compact context for agents and RAG pipelines
text	Plain text with minimal formatting
json	Structured metadata, links, images, and extracted fields
html	Cleaned HTML for custom processing

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Local First, Hosted When Needed

The CLI and MCP server work locally without an account for the core extraction path.

Use the hosted API at webclaw.io when you need:

• protected-site access without managing infrastructure
• JavaScript rendering
• async crawl and research jobs
• web search
• watches and production usage tracking
• SDKs for application code

export WEBCLAW_API_KEY=wc_your_key

webclaw https://example.com --cloud

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What You Can Build

Use case	Example
AI agent web access	Give Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client clean page context
RAG ingestion	Crawl docs, help centers, blogs, and knowledge bases
Competitor monitoring	Track pricing pages, changelogs, docs, and product pages
Structured extraction	Turn messy pages into typed JSON for automations
Research workflows	Search, scrape, summarize, and cite multiple sources
Brand intelligence	Extract logos, colors, fonts, and social metadata

Architecture

webclaw/
  crates/
    webclaw-core     HTML to markdown, text, JSON, and LLM-ready output
    webclaw-fetch    Fetching, crawling, batching, and mapping
    webclaw-llm      Local and hosted LLM provider support
    webclaw-pdf      PDF text extraction
    webclaw-mcp      MCP server for AI agents
    webclaw-cli      Command-line interface

webclaw-core is pure extraction logic: no network I/O, small surface area, and usable independently from the fetching layer.

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Configuration

Variable	Description
WEBCLAW_API_KEY	Hosted API key
OLLAMA_HOST	Ollama URL for local LLM features
OPENAI_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible LLM provider key
OPENAI_BASE_URL	OpenAI-compatible base URL
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Anthropic-compatible LLM provider key
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL	Anthropic-compatible base URL
WEBCLAW_PROXY	Single proxy URL
WEBCLAW_PROXY_FILE	Proxy pool file

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Contributing

The most useful contributions right now are practical and small:

• add examples for real agent and RAG workflows
• improve SDK snippets
• report pages that extract poorly
• add failing fixtures for messy HTML
• improve docs for MCP clients and local setup
• test the CLI on more Linux/macOS environments

Good first places to start:

• Good first issues
• Open a bug report
• Start a discussion

If a page extracts badly, include:

URL:
Command or API request:
Expected output:
Actual output:
Format used: markdown / llm / text / json / html
CLI, MCP, SDK, or API:

Please remove secrets, cookies, private tokens, and customer data from logs before posting.

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Contributors

Thanks to everyone improving webclaw through issues, examples, docs, bug reports, and pull requests.

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Star History

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License

AGPL-3.0