jina-reader

---

name: jina-reader description: Fetch a webpage as clean, structured Markdown via the jina.ai reader (r.jina.ai) instead of raw HTML — use whenever you need to read web content and want to save tokens, or when a normal fetch is blocked (HTTP 403/401), returns messy/boilerplate HTML, or the page is JavaScript-rendered (SPA, docs sites, wikis like grokipedia/notion/medium). Triggers: "fetch this page", "read this URL", "summarize this article/webpage", "get the docs at ", or any WebFetch that returned 403/garbled HTML.

jina.ai reader — clean Markdown from any URL

The jina.ai reader proxies a target page and returns readable Markdown (article text, headings, tables, code — boilerplate/nav/ads stripped). This is far cheaper in tokens than raw HTML and often succeeds where a direct fetch is blocked or the page is JS-rendered.

How to use

Prefix the target URL with https://r.jina.ai/ and fetch that, then run your prompt against the result:

WebFetch(
  url:    "https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com/some/article",
  prompt: "<what you want extracted>"
)

Rules:

• Keep the target URL's scheme in the path: https://r.jina.ai/https://… (or http://…). Do not URL-encode it.
• Works for both WebFetch and a raw curl -s "https://r.jina.ai/https://…" in Bash when you need the full text rather than an LLM extraction.

When to reach for it (vs a plain fetch)

• A direct WebFetch returned HTTP 403/401 or a cross-host redirect loop.
• The page is a JS-heavy SPA / wiki / docs site (grokipedia, notion, medium, confluence, gitbook) where raw HTML is mostly script.
• You want structured Markdown to save tokens — long articles, API docs, spec pages, tables.
• You only need the readable content, not the exact HTML/DOM.

When NOT to use it

• Authenticated/private URLs (jina can't see your session) — use the proper authenticated tool (gh, an MCP fetch, Google Drive/Gmail tools).
• You specifically need the raw bytes/HTML/JSON of an API or file (fetch the URL directly).
• Very large pages you only need a slice of — fetch directly with a narrow prompt if the direct fetch works.

Caveats

• It's a third-party proxy: the target URL (but not your auth) is sent to jina.ai. Don't route sensitive/internal URLs through it.
• Content is a rendered snapshot; for fast-changing pages re-fetch rather than trusting a cache.
• If jina itself is rate-limited or errors, fall back to a direct WebFetch/curl, or WebSearch.