| name | wayback |
| description | Query the Wayback Machine / Internet Archive — search snapshots, check availability, fetch archived page content. Use when user needs historical web pages, archived content, or wants to check if a URL was previously captured. |
| allowed-tools | Bash, Read |
Wayback Machine
Query the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for archived web pages.
When to Use
- User wants to see an old/archived version of a web page
- Checking if a URL/domain was previously active
- Retrieving historical page content
- Searching for all snapshots of a URL
- Comparing page content over time
Requirements
No API key required — Wayback Machine is free and public.
Commands
search — Find snapshots
./scripts/wayback_search search "https://example.com" [-n 25] [--from 20200101] [--to 20231231]
check — Quick availability check
./scripts/wayback_search check "https://example.com"
latest — Fetch latest snapshot content
./scripts/wayback_search latest "https://example.com" [-f json]
get — Fetch snapshot at specific timestamp
./scripts/wayback_search get "https://example.com" -t 20200101120000
Options
| Option | Description |
|---|
-n, --limit | Max results for search (default: 25) |
--from | Start date YYYYMMDD |
--to | End date YYYYMMDD |
-s, --status | Filter by HTTP status (e.g. 200) |
--collapse | Dedupe by field (e.g. digest, timestamp:6) |
-m, --match | URL match: exact, prefix, host, domain |
-t, --timestamp | Snapshot timestamp for get/check |
--raw | Return raw HTML instead of extracted text |
-c, --max-chars | Max content chars (default: 10000) |
-f, --format | Output: json (default) or table |
Output Format
search — list of snapshots:
[
{"timestamp": "20200101120000", "original": "https://example.com/", "statuscode": "200", "mimetype": "text/html", "digest": "ABC123"}
]
latest/get — extracted content:
{
"url": "https://example.com",
"timestamp": "20231215120000",
"archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20231215120000/https://example.com",
"title": "Example Domain",
"content": "Extracted page text..."
}
Examples
Search with date range:
./scripts/wayback_search search "https://example.com" --from 20200101 --to 20201231
Search all subpages of a domain:
./scripts/wayback_search search "example.com" --match domain --status 200 -n 50
Deduplicate by content:
./scripts/wayback_search search "https://example.com" --collapse digest
Get page as it appeared on a specific date:
./scripts/wayback_search get "https://example.com" -t 20200615
