webclaw

<p align="center"><strong>English</strong> | <a href="./README_zh-CN.md">简体中文</a></p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://webclaw.io"> <img src=".github/banner.png" alt="webclaw" width="760" /> </a> </p> <h1 align="center">webclaw</h1> <p align="center"> <strong>Turn websites into clean markdown, JSON, and LLM-ready context.</strong><br/> _{CLI, MCP server, REST API, and SDKs for AI agents and RAG pipelines.} </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw/stargazers"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/github/stars/0xMassi/webclaw.svg?variant=branded&logo=github" alt="Stars" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw/releases"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/github/tag/0xMassi/webclaw.svg?variant=branded&logo=rust" alt="Version" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw/blob/main/LICENSE"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/github/license/0xMassi/webclaw.svg?variant=branded" alt="License" /></a> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/create-webclaw"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/npm/dt/create-webclaw.svg?variant=branded" alt="npm installs" /></a> </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://discord.gg/KDfd48EpnW"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/badge/Discord-Join.svg?variant=branded&logo=discord" alt="Discord" /></a> <a href="https://x.com/webclaw_io"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/badge/Follow-@webclaw__io.svg?variant=branded&logo=x" alt="X / Twitter" /></a> <a href="https://webclaw.io"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/badge/Hosted-webclaw.io.svg?variant=branded&logo=safari" alt="Hosted webclaw" /></a> <a href="https://webclaw.io/docs"><img src="https://shieldcn.dev/badge/Docs-Read.svg?variant=branded&logo=readthedocs" alt="Docs" /></a> </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://trendshift.io/repositories/24218?utm_source=trendshift-badge&amp;utm_medium=badge&amp;utm_campaign=badge-trendshift-24218" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img src="https://trendshift.io/api/badge/trendshift/repositories/24218/daily?language=Rust" alt="0xMassi/webclaw | Trendshift" width="250" height="55"/></a> </p> <p align="center"> <img src="assets/demo.gif" alt="webclaw extracting clean markdown from a page" width="760" /> </p>

---

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.

---

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, Linux, and Windows binaries from GitHub Releases.

Windows (x64)

The prebuilt ZIP is the easiest installation and does not require Rust. On the v0.6.22 release page, download webclaw-v0.6.22-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip. Extract it in File Explorer, open PowerShell in the extracted folder containing webclaw.exe, and run:

.\webclaw.exe --version
.\webclaw.exe https://example.com --format markdown

PowerShell requires the .\ prefix for programs in the current directory. Add that directory to your user PATH only if you want to run webclaw from other folders. If Windows reports a missing Visual C++ runtime DLL, install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for x64. The ZIP contains x64 binaries; Windows ARM64 is not covered by the native installation check.

To build from source on Windows, install Rust with the x86_64-pc-windows-msvc toolchain, Visual Studio Build Tools with Desktop development with C++ and the Windows SDK, Git, CMake 3.22 or newer, LLVM (including libclang.dll), and NASM. Open a fresh Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio after installation. Ensure CMake and NASM are on PATH and set LIBCLANG_PATH to your LLVM bin directory if bindgen cannot find it, for example:

$env:LIBCLANG_PATH = "C:\Program Files\LLVM\bin"
cargo install --git https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw.git --tag v0.6.22 --locked webclaw-cli
webclaw --version

The Cargo package is webclaw-cli; the executable is webclaw. These packages are installed from Git, not crates.io. A first source build can take several minutes. The Windows CI workflow checks the Git installation and published ZIP on a hosted runner with preinstalled build tools; it does not model a clean PC. Linux containers, including Docker on macOS, do not validate Windows support.

Docker

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

Cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw.git --tag v0.6.22 --locked webclaw-cli
cargo install --git https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw.git --tag v0.6.22 --locked 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 |

---

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

Workflow examples

• HTML to Markdown for RAG
• Firecrawl-compatible API
• MCP web scraping
• Proxy-backed crawling with ColdProxy
• Cloudflare diagnostics

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

---

MCP Server

webclaw ships with an MCP server for AI agents.

Zero-install — point any MCP client at the npx launcher:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webclaw": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@webclaw/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Or run npx create-webclaw to auto-detect your AI tools and write their configs for you.

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.

---

Use as an agent skill

Add webclaw to Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and other MCP agents in one command:

npx skills add 0xMassi/webclaw-skill

Your agent gets scrape, crawl, map, extract, summarize, diff, brand, and search as native tools. Most sites extract locally with no API key. Set WEBCLAW_API_KEY to handle bot-protected and JavaScript-rendered pages.

Find it on skills.sh.

---

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 |

---

SDKs

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

<details> <summary>TypeScript</summary>

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);

</details> <details> <summary>Python</summary>

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)

</details> <details> <summary>cURL</summary>

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
  }'

</details>

---

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 |

---

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

---

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.

---

Configuration

| Variable | Description | |