wikitext-fetcher

name	wikitext-fetcher
description	Use when the user gives a Wikipedia (or any MediaWiki) page URL and wants its raw source. Fetches the underlying MediaWiki wikitext (the raw markup) for the page via the MediaWiki API. Triggers on "get the wikitext", "fetch the MediaWiki source", "raw wiki source", "wikitext of this page", or pasting a wikipedia.org/wiki/... URL and asking for its source.
version	1.0.0
allowed-tools	Bash, Read

Wikitext Fetcher

Given a Wikipedia / MediaWiki page URL, fetch the page's raw wikitext (the MediaWiki markup source) and return it to the user.

Input URL: $ARGUMENTS

What "MediaWiki source" means

The rendered HTML page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo is generated from raw markup called wikitext. This skill retrieves that wikitext, not the HTML.

Steps

1. Identify the URL. Use $ARGUMENTS if provided; otherwise use the URL the user pasted in the conversation. If no URL is available, ask for one.

2. Fetch the wikitext by running the helper script that ships in this skill's own scripts/ directory:

   python3 "<this-skill-dir>/scripts/get_wikitext.py" "<URL>"
   

   <this-skill-dir> is the folder this SKILL.md lives in. Depending on how the skill was installed it resolves to one of: ~/.claude/skills/wikitext-fetcher, ~/.copilot/skills/wikitext-fetcher, or ~/.agents/skills/wikitext-fetcher.

   If python3 is unavailable, use python. The script:

   • Parses the wiki host (e.g. en.wikipedia.org, ja.wikipedia.org, en.wiktionary.org) and the page title from either a /wiki/<Title> path or a /w/index.php?title=<Title> query.
   • Calls the MediaWiki API: https://<host>/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&rvslots=main&formatversion=2&format=json&redirects=1&titles=<Title>
   • Follows redirects and prints the raw wikitext (UTF-8) to stdout.
   • Fetches via curl (primary), which validates against the OS trust store — reliable even where Python's own CA bundle is missing/expired. It falls back to Python's urllib only if curl is not on PATH. No setup needed.

3. Save the result to a file in the current working directory (the project / repo root the user is working in — not a temp or scratchpad directory). Redirect the script's stdout to <PageTitle>.wikitext, where <PageTitle> is the page title with characters illegal in filenames (/ \ : * ? " < > |) replaced by _. For example:

   python3 "<this-skill-dir>/scripts/get_wikitext.py" "<URL>" > "K6_(software).wikitext"
   

   Then tell the user the saved path and show a short excerpt. If the script exits non-zero, report the error instead of writing an empty file.

Manual fallback (no Python at all)

Fetch the raw source directly — the MediaWiki action=raw endpoint returns plain wikitext:

curl -sL "https://<host>/w/index.php?title=<Title>&action=raw"

Extract <host> and <Title> from the URL by hand (URL-decode the title, keep underscores or spaces — MediaWiki accepts either). This avoids JSON parsing but does not report redirects explicitly.

Notes

• Works for any MediaWiki site that exposes /w/api.php, not just Wikipedia.
• A missing page yields an error/missing flag — report that clearly rather than returning empty output.
• Do not strip or "clean up" the wikitext unless the user asks; return it as-is.