read

name	read
description	Fetches any URL or PDF as clean Markdown for reading, quoting, citation, or downstream work. Handles paywalls, JS-heavy pages, X/Twitter, and Chinese platforms via proxy cascade. Not for local text files already in the repo.
when_to_use	any URL or PDF to fetch, 看这个链接, 读一下, 看看这个网页, 抓取网页, read this, check this URL, fetch this page
dispatch_intent	Any URL or PDF to fetch, read this, fetch this page

Read: Fetch Any URL or PDF as Markdown

Prefix your first line with 🥷 inline, not as its own paragraph.

Convert any URL or local PDF to clean Markdown. No analysis, no summary, no discussion of the content unless explicitly asked after the fetch.

Routing

Input	Method
feishu.cn, larksuite.com	Feishu API script
mp.weixin.qq.com	Proxy cascade first, built-in WeChat article script only if the proxies fail
.pdf URL or local PDF path	PDF extraction
GitHub URLs (github.com, raw.githubusercontent.com)	Prefer raw content or gh first. Use the proxy cascade only as fallback.
x.com, twitter.com	Proxy cascade (r.jina.ai keeps image URLs). Do not try WebFetch; it 402s.
Everything else	Proxy cascade

After routing, load references/read-methods.md and run the commands for the chosen method.

Privacy and Fetch Tiers

scripts/fetch.sh is privacy-first. The cascade depends on whether the user opts into proxy services.

• Default (fetch.sh URL): local extractor only. The URL never leaves the machine. Best quality requires pip install --user readability-lxml html2text; without those, falls back to a stdlib HTML stripper (works but messier output).
• Opt-in (fetch.sh --use-proxy URL): local first, then defuddle.md, then r.jina.ai. Those third-party services receive the URL and may cache or log it. Reserve --use-proxy for JS-heavy pages (X/Twitter), paywalls, or anything the local extractor cannot reach.

Every tier emits a structured stderr line: [fetch] tier=<name> status=<ok|fail> reason="...". Read the stderr if a fetch fails; it names the specific tier and reason.

Hard rule: do not pass authenticated, internal, or otherwise sensitive URLs to --use-proxy. Default mode is safe; proxy mode is not.

Output Format

Title:  {title}
Author: {author} (if available)
Source: {platform}
URL:    {original url}

Content
{full Markdown, truncated at 200 lines if long}

Saving

Default: display only. Show the converted Markdown inline. Do not create a file.

Save to ~/Downloads/{title}.md with YAML frontmatter when any of these are true:

• User explicitly asks: "save", "download", "保存", "下载", "keep this"
• Called from within /learn (Phase 1 expects a file to move)
• User says "save" or "保存" after seeing the output (use conversation content, do not re-fetch)

When saving:

• If the file already exists, append -1, -2, etc. Never overwrite without confirmation.
• Tell the user the saved path.

When not saving:

• Do not mention that a file was not saved. Just show the content.

Images

By default only save Markdown. Download images only when the user explicitly asks: "download images", "save images", "带图", "下载图片", or similar.

When asked, after saving the Markdown:

1. Extract image URLs: grep -oE 'https?://[^ )"]+\.(jpg|jpeg|png|webp|gif)' {md_path} | sort -u
2. Create ~/Downloads/{title}-images/ and curl each URL in parallel (& + wait). Use the same proxy env vars as the fetch step.
3. Report the count and folder path. If any download fails, list the failed URLs.

Hard Rules

• Do not summarize or analyze the content. Your job is conversion and storage, not interpretation.
• Never overwrite without confirmation. If the target filename already exists, use an auto-incremented suffix.
• Stop after the save report. Do not suggest follow-up actions ("Would you like me to summarize?", "Next, you could...") unless the user asks.

Gotchas

What happened	Rule
Fetched a paywalled article and returned a login page as Markdown	Inspect the first 10 lines for paywall signals ("Subscribe", "Sign in", "Continue reading"). If found, stop and warn the user. Do not save the login page.
User said "read this" but meant "summarize and act on it"	Deliver the Markdown first, then ask what to do next. Do not save unless asked.
URL returned empty page or paywall with no content	Report the failure clearly: what was tried, what failed. Do not fabricate or guess the content.
Local extractor returned a few lines of menu junk	Install readability-lxml + html2text (pip install --user readability-lxml html2text) for a real article extractor.
Default fetch failed and the page is clearly public	Re-run with --use-proxy to send the URL through defuddle.md / r.jina.ai. Only do this for public, non-sensitive URLs.
Network failures	Prepend local proxy env vars if available and retry once.
Long content	Preview with head -n 200 first; mention truncation when reporting the save.
Local fallback tools returned JSON	Extract the Markdown-bearing field. Raw JSON is not a valid final output for /read.
All methods failed	Stop and tell the user what was tried and what failed. Suggest opening the URL in a browser or providing an alternative. Do not silently return empty or partial results.

Content Extraction for Restyling

Activate when: "extract content", "reformat this document", or user hands over a document to restyle

Extract and tag:

• Headings: H1/H2/H3 hierarchy
• Body paragraphs: Plain text, no styling
• Lists: Bullet vs numbered, nesting level
• Metrics/data: Numbers, dates, quantifiable claims
• Images/diagrams: Descriptions, captions

Output: Clean, tagged content ready to feed into kami or other typesetting tools.