| name | web-read |
| description | Read a web page as clean Markdown instead of raw HTML. Use whenever you need the actual content of a specific URL — an article, vendor/pricing page, changelog, docs page, or any link a search result pointed you to. Trigger phrases: "read this page", "what does <url> say", "fetch/open this link", "get the article", "extract the content", or any time you would otherwise `curl` a URL to read it. The `web-read` CLI is on `$PATH`.
|
Read a web page as clean Markdown with web-read
web-read is a CLI on $PATH that fetches a URL through Jina Reader
and returns clean, readable Markdown — the page's actual content with the
HTML tags, scripts, and navigation chrome stripped server-side.
Prefer web-read over raw curl when your goal is to read a page. Raw
curl returns the HTML source (tags and all), which buries the content and
wastes context. Use curl only for API calls or when web-read can't reach a page.
Usage
web-read "https://example.com/article" > /tmp/page.md
head -c 5000 /tmp/page.md
web-read --json "https://example.com/article"
Only http:// and https:// URLs are accepted. Quote the URL.
Behavior and exit codes
| Exit | Meaning |
|---|
0 | Success — page content is on stdout. |
2 | Usage / validation error (no URL, bad scheme, unknown flag). Fix the call. |
3 | Fetch failed — non-2xx from Jina or a timeout. A clear error is printed to stderr. Treat as a failed fetch: try another URL or stop; do not fabricate content. |
All errors go to stderr, so web-read "$url" > /tmp/page.md leaves /tmp/page.md
holding clean content (or empty on failure) — never an error string mixed into the text.
Environment
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|
JINA_API_KEY | Optional. Sent as a Bearer token for a higher rate limit. Anonymous (no key) still works. |
WEB_READ_TIMEOUT | Optional. Per-request timeout in seconds (default 20). |
Privacy note
The target URL transits r.jina.ai, a third-party reader service. That is fine
for public research. Do not point web-read at private, internal, or
regulated content — fetch those with curl directly instead.
