Web2MD

A tool that fetches web pages and returns them as Markdown. Designed to minimize token usage when invoked via MCP (Model Context Protocol).

Why?

Raw HTML is noisy: scripts, styles, ads, and markup bloat consume LLM context window. Web2MD fetches a page and converts it to clean Markdown, preserving content hierarchy while stripping everything non-essential.

Quick Start

# Interactive terminal browser (default — Lynx-like)
cargo run -- https://example.com
# [1-20] follow numbered link  [b]ack  [f]orward  [u] enter URL  [q]uit

# Fetch a page as Markdown (one-shot)
cargo run -- fetch https://example.com

# Limit output length
cargo run -- fetch https://example.com --max-length 4000

# Render with ANSI colors in the terminal (bold headings, underlined links)
cargo run -- fetch https://example.com --render

# Output structured JSON (markdown + metadata) for scripting
cargo run -- fetch https://example.com --format json

# Add a polite delay between requests (milliseconds)
cargo run -- fetch https://example.com --delay 500

# Interactive terminal browser (explicit)
cargo run -- browse https://example.com

# Run as MCP server (stdio JSON-RPC)
cargo run -- mcp

Features

Interactive terminal browser (browse): Lynx-like navigation with numbered links, back/forward history
ANSI rendering (--render): Bold headings, underlined cyan links, colored code blocks in terminal output
Table rendering: Markdown tables drawn with box-drawing characters (┌─┬─┐)
Iframe inlining: Fetches <iframe src="..."> content and embeds it into the parent page
Noise reduction: Strips <script>, <style>, <iframe>, <nav>, <footer>, <aside>, <noscript>, <form>, <header>, HTML comments, and excessive whitespace (use --keep-header to preserve <header>)
Content deduplication: Removes duplicate paragraph-level blocks to further reduce token output
Main content extraction (--main-content): Extracts <article>, <main>, or [role="main"] content; falls back to readability scoring (text-density vs link-density) on <div>/<section> blocks, then paragraph-level sliding window scoring on <p> blocks for pages without semantic tags
Code language detection: Preserves language annotations from <code class="language-xxx"> as fenced block languages (```rust)
Auth support: Cookies (--cookie) and custom headers (--header) for authenticated pages
Rate limiting (--delay): Polite delay between consecutive requests to avoid hammering servers
Caching (--cache-ttl): In-memory cache with configurable TTL to avoid re-fetching the same URL
MCP server: stdio JSON-RPC transport for LLM tool integration
Metadata extraction: Title, description, author (meta tag or JSON-LD), publication date, image (og:image or JSON-LD), headline (JSON-LD), site name (og:site_name), and keywords/tags (article:tag, meta keywords, or JSON-LD) returned in MCP response and --format json output
JSON output (--format json): Emit structured JSON (markdown + metadata) from CLI for scripting and piping
Comments extraction: Detects forum/thread pages (Reddit, WordPress, vBulletin) and extracts comments with author attribution, nesting depth, and blockquote formatting
Link URL absolutization: Converts relative URLs in Markdown links to absolute URLs using the page URL as base, so links are usable in LLM contexts
Sitemap/feed discovery (sitemap subcommand): Fetches sitemap.xml from a website and lists all discovered URLs; optionally discovers RSS/Atom feed links from the HTML page (--feeds flag)
Batch processing (batch subcommand): Reads URLs from a file (one per line, # comments supported) and converts each to Markdown; use --output <dir> to write files to a directory
Output to file (--output flag): Write fetch output to a file instead of stdout
YAML frontmatter (--frontmatter flag): Prepend metadata (title, description, author, date, image, site name, keywords) as a YAML block at the top of Markdown output — useful for static site generators and LLM context
CSS selector targeting (--exclude-selector flag): Strip HTML elements matching .class or #id selectors before conversion — remove ads, sidebars, and other noise elements

Architecture

Browser (browser.rs): Minimal HTTP client with iframe inlining. No rendering engine—intentionally lightweight.
PageToMarkdown (markdown.rs): HTML-to-Markdown conversion. Strips scripts, styles, iframes, images (optional).
McpServer (mcp.rs): JSON-RPC server wrapper exposing a fetch tool.
CLI (main.rs): fetch (one-shot), browse (interactive), sitemap (URL discovery), batch (bulk convert), mcp (server). Default mode is browse.

See ARCHITECTURE.md for details.

Project Status