defuddle

name	defuddle
description	Extract clean markdown content from web pages using the Defuddle CLI, removing clutter and navigation to save tokens. Use instead of WebFetch when the user provides a URL to read or analyze, for online documentation, articles, blog posts, or any standard web page.

Defuddle

Extract the main content from web pages and convert to clean Markdown. Removes navigation, ads, sidebars, footers, and comments. Built by the Obsidian team.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+ installed
• npx available (comes with npm)
• Or install globally: npm install -g defuddle

Commands

Extract as Markdown (default choice)

npx defuddle parse <url> --md

Extract as JSON (includes metadata)

npx defuddle parse <url> --json

JSON output includes: content, title, author, description, domain, site, favicon, image, language, published, wordCount, parseTime.

Save to file

npx defuddle parse <url> --md -o output.md

Extract specific metadata property

npx defuddle parse <url> -p title
npx defuddle parse <url> -p author
npx defuddle parse <url> -p description
npx defuddle parse <url> -p domain
npx defuddle parse <url> -p published

Parse a local HTML file

npx defuddle parse page.html --md

When to Use

• Reading an article, blog post, or documentation page
• Clipping web content to save in the vault
• Extracting text from a URL the user provided
• Minimizing token usage when processing web pages (removes clutter)
• Converting web content to Obsidian-compatible Markdown

When NOT to Use

• Pages requiring authentication or login
• API endpoints returning JSON/XML (use curl or fetch directly)
• Pages that are already Markdown or plain text
• Dynamic single-page apps that require JavaScript interaction

Workflow: Clip to Vault

# 1. Extract the content
npx defuddle parse "https://example.com/article" --md -o /tmp/clip.md

# 2. Read the extracted content
cat /tmp/clip.md

# 3. Save to vault (via obsidian CLI or obsidian-connector MCP)
obsidian create path="Inbox/article-title.md" content="$(cat /tmp/clip.md)"

Troubleshooting

• "npx: command not found": Install Node.js from https://nodejs.org
• First run is slow: npx downloads the package on first use (~2-3 seconds)
• Empty output: The page may block automated access. Try a different URL.
• For faster repeated use: npm install -g defuddle then use defuddle parse (no npx)

Site-Specific Extractors

Defuddle includes optimized extractors for:

• Twitter/X (via FxTwitter API)
• Reddit
• Hacker News
• ChatGPT conversations
• Grok conversations

These return cleaner output than the generic extractor for those platforms.