summarize

name	summarize
description	Summarize or extract text from URLs, articles, PDFs, and local files. Use when: user asks to summarize a link, article, web page, or document, or asks 'what is this link about?'. NOT for: YouTube transcripts (use youtube skill), full document editing, or real-time news (use news skill).
dependencies	requests, beautifulsoup4
metadata	{"emoji":"🧾"}

Summarize

Extract and summarise content from URLs, articles, and local files.

When to Use

✅ USE this skill when:

• "Summarize this article/URL"
• "What's this link about?"
• "Give me the key points from this page"
• "TL;DR this document"
• "Extract the main content from this URL"

When NOT to Use

❌ DON'T use this skill when:

• YouTube video transcripts → use youtube skill
• Real-time news search → use news skill
• PDF text extraction → use pdf_reader skill
• Web search for information → use tavily_search or web_search tool

Usage

Summarize a URL

python {skill_path}/summarize_url.py "https://example.com/article"

Options

# Short summary (default)
python {skill_path}/summarize_url.py "https://example.com" --length short

# Detailed summary
python {skill_path}/summarize_url.py "https://example.com" --length long

# Extract text only (no summarization)
python {skill_path}/summarize_url.py "https://example.com" --extract-only

# JSON output
python {skill_path}/summarize_url.py "https://example.com" --format json

Quick Alternative (curl + readability)

For simple text extraction without the script:

curl -sL "https://example.com" | python -c "
import sys
from html.parser import HTMLParser
class S(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(s): super().__init__(); s.t=[]; s.skip={'script','style','nav','footer','header'}; s.s=set()
    def handle_starttag(s,t,a): (s.s.add(t) if t in s.skip else None)
    def handle_endtag(s,t): s.s.discard(t)
    def handle_data(s,d): (s.t.append(d.strip()) if not s.s and d.strip() else None)
p=S(); p.feed(sys.stdin.read()); print('\n'.join(p.t[:100]))
"

Notes

• Requires requests and beautifulsoup4 (installed by default)
• Some sites block automated access — try adding a User-Agent header
• For paywalled content, the script can only extract freely available text
• Large pages are truncated to avoid context overflow

Resources

File	Description
summarize_url.py	Fetch, extract, and summarise web page content