URL to Markdown

Fetches any URL via Chrome CDP, saves the rendered HTML snapshot, and converts it to clean markdown.

Script Directory

Important: All scripts are located in the scripts/ subdirectory of this skill.

Agent Execution Instructions:

1. Determine this SKILL.md file's directory path as {baseDir}
2. Script path = {baseDir}/scripts/<script-name>.ts
3. Resolve ${BUN_X} runtime: if bun installed → bun; if npx available → npx -y bun; else suggest installing bun
4. Replace all {baseDir} and ${BUN_X} in this document with actual values

Script Reference: | Script | Purpose | |--------|---------| | scripts/main.ts | CLI entry point for URL fetching | | scripts/html-to-markdown.ts | Markdown conversion entry point and converter selection | | scripts/parsers/index.ts | Unified parser entry: dispatches URL-specific rules before generic converters | | scripts/parsers/types.ts | Unified parser interface shared by all rule files | | scripts/parsers/rules/*.ts | One file per URL rule, for example X status and X article | | scripts/defuddle-converter.ts | Defuddle-based conversion | | scripts/legacy-converter.ts | Pre-Defuddle legacy extraction and markdown conversion | | scripts/markdown-conversion-shared.ts | Shared metadata parsing and markdown document helpers |

Preferences (EXTEND.md)

Check EXTEND.md existence (priority order):

bash
# macOS, Linux, WSL, Git Bash
test -f .baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md && echo "project"
test -f "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md" && echo "xdg"
test -f "$HOME/.baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md" && echo "user"

powershell
# PowerShell (Windows)
if (Test-Path .baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md) { "project" }
$xdg = if ($env:XDG_CONFIG_HOME) { $env:XDG_CONFIG_HOME } else { "$HOME/.config" }
if (Test-Path "$xdg/baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md") { "xdg" }
if (Test-Path "$HOME/.baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md") { "user" }

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────┐ │ Path │ Location │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────┤ │ .baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md │ Project directory │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────┤ │ $HOME/.baoyu-skills/baoyu-url-to-markdown/EXTEND.md │ User home │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────┘

┌───────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Result │ Action │ ├───────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Found │ Read, parse, apply settings │ ├───────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Not found │ MUST run first-time setup (see below) — do NOT silently create defaults │ └───────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

EXTEND.md Supports: Download media by default | Default output directory | Default capture mode | Timeout settings

First-Time Setup (BLOCKING)

CRITICAL: When EXTEND.md is not found, you MUST use AskUserQuestion to ask the user for their preferences before creating EXTEND.md. NEVER create EXTEND.md with defaults without asking. This is a BLOCKING operation — do NOT proceed with any conversion until setup is complete.

Use AskUserQuestion with ALL questions in ONE call:

Question 1 — header: "Media", question: "How to handle images and videos in pages?"

• "Ask each time (Recommended)" — After saving markdown, ask whether to download media
• "Always download" — Always download media to local imgs/ and videos/ directories
• "Never download" — Keep original remote URLs in markdown

Question 2 — header: "Output", question: "Default output directory?"

• "url-to-markdown (Recommended)" — Save to ./url-to-markdown/{domain}/{slug}.md
• (User may choose "Other" to type a custom path)

Question 3 — header: "Save", question: "Where to save preferences?"

• "User (Recommended)" — ~/.baoyu-skills/ (all projects)
• "Project" — .baoyu-skills/ (this project only)

After user answers, create EXTEND.md at the chosen location, confirm "Preferences saved to path]", then continue.

Full reference: references/config/first-time-setup.md

Supported Keys

| Key | Default | Values | Description | |-----|---------|--------|-------------| | download_media | ask | ask / 1 / 0 | ask = prompt each time, 1 = always download, 0 = never | | default_output_dir | empty | path or empty | Default output directory (empty = ./url-to-markdown/) |

EXTEND.md → CLI mapping: | EXTEND.md key | CLI argument | Notes | |---------------|-------------|-------| | download_media: 1 | --download-media | | | default_output_dir: ./posts/ | --output-dir ./posts/ | Directory path. Do NOT pass to -o (which expects a file path) |

Value priority:

1. CLI arguments (--download-media, -o, --output-dir)
2. EXTEND.md
3. Skill defaults

Features

• Chrome CDP for full JavaScript rendering
• Browser strategy fallback: default headless first, then visible Chrome on technical failure
• URL-specific parser layer for sites that need custom HTML rules before generic extraction
• Two capture modes: auto or wait-for-user
• Save rendered HTML as a sibling -captured.html file
• Clean markdown output with metadata
• Upgraded Defuddle-first markdown conversion with automatic fallback to the pre-Defuddle extractor from git history
• X/Twitter pages can use HTML-specific parsing for Tweets and Articles, which improves title/body/media extraction on x.com / twitter.com
• archive.ph / related archive mirrors can restore the original URL from input[name=q] and prefer #CONTENT before falling back to the page body
• Materializes shadow DOM content before conversion so web-component pages survive serialization better
• YouTube pages can include transcript/caption text in the markdown when YouTube exposes a caption track
• If local browser capture fails completely, can fall back to defuddle.md/<url> and still save markdown
• Handles login-required pages via wait mode
• Download images and videos to local directories

Usage

bash
# Auto mode (default) - capture when page loads
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url>

# Force headless only
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> --browser headless

# Force visible browser
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> --browser headed

# Wait mode - wait for user signal before capture
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> --wait

# Save to specific file
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> -o output.md

# Save to a custom output directory (auto-generates filename)
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> --output-dir ./posts/

# Download images and videos to local directories
${BUN_X} {baseDir}/scripts/main.ts <url> --download-media

Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | <url> | URL to fetch | | -o <path> | Output file path — must be a file path, not directory (default: auto-generated) | | --output-dir <dir> | Base output directory — auto-generates {dir}/{domain}/{slug}.md (default: ./url-to-markdown/) | | --wait | Wait for user signal before capturing | | --browser <mode> | Browser strategy: auto (default), headless, or headed | | --headless | Shortcut for --browser headless | | --headed | Shortcut for --browser headed | | --timeout <ms> | Page load timeout (default: 30000) | | --download-media | Download image/video assets to local imgs/ and videos/, and rewrite markdown links to local relative paths |

Capture Modes

| Mode | Behavior | Use When | |------|----------|----------| | Auto (default) | Try headless first, then retry in visible Chrome if needed | Public pages, static content, unknown pages | | Wait (--wait) | User signals when ready | Login-required, lazy loading, paywalls |

Wait mode workflow:

1. Run with --wait → script outputs "Press Enter when ready"
2. Ask user to confirm page is ready
3. Send newline to stdin to trigger capture

Default browser fallback:

1. Auto mode starts with headless Chrome and captures on network idle
2. If headless capture fails technically, retry with visible Chrome
3. If a shared Chrome session for this profile already exists, reuse it instead of launching a new browser
4. The script does not hard-code login or paywall detection; the agent must inspect the captured markdown or HTML and decide whether to rerun with --browser headed --wait

Agent Quality Gate

CRITICAL: The agent must treat headless capture as provisional. Some sites render differently in headless mode and can silently return an error shell, partially hydrated page, or low-quality extraction without causing the CLI to fail.

After every run that used --browser auto or --browser headless, the agent MUST inspect the saved markdown first, and inspect the saved -captured.html when the markdown looks suspicious.

Quality checks the agent must perform

1. Confirm the markdown title matches the target page, not a generic site shell
2. Confirm the body contains the expected article or page content, not just navigation, footer, or a generic error
3. Watch for obvious failure signs such as:

• Application error
• This page could not be found
• login, signup, subscribe, or verification shells
• extremely short markdown for a page that should be long-form
• raw framework payloads or mostly boilerplate content

1. If the result is low quality, incomplete, or clearly wrong, do not accept the run as successful just because the CLI exited with code 0

Recovery workflow the agent must follow

1. First run with default auto unless there is already a clear reason to use wait mode
2. Review markdown quality immediately after the run
3. If the content is low quality, rerun locally with visible Chrome:

• --browser headed for ordinary rendering issues
• --browser headed --wait when the page may need login, anti-bot interaction, cookie acceptance, or extra hydration time

1. If --wait is used, tell the user exactly what to do:

• if login is required, ask them to sign in
• if the page needs time to hydrate, ask them to wait until the full content is visible
• once ready, ask them to press Enter so capture can continue

1. Only fall back to hosted defuddle.md after the local browser strategies have failed or are clearly lower fidelity

Output Format

Each run saves two files side by side:

• Markdown: YAML front matter with url, title, description, author, published, optional coverImage, and captured_at, followed by converted markdown content
• HTML snapshot: *-captured.html, containing the rendered page HTML captured from Chrome

When Defuddle or page metadata provides a language hint, the markdown front matter also includes language.

The HTML snapshot is saved before any markdown media localization, so it stays a faithful capture of the page DOM used for conversion. If the hosted defuddle.md API fallback is used, markdown is still saved, but there is no local -captured.html snapshot for that run.

Output Directory

Default: url-to-markdown/<domain>/<slug>.md With --output-dir ./posts/: ./posts/<domain>/<slug>.md

HTML snapshot path uses the same basename:

• url-to-markdown/<domain>/<slug>-captured.html
• ./posts/<domain>/<slug>-captured.html

• <slug>: From page title or URL path (kebab-case, 2-6 words)
• Conflict resolution: Append timestamp <slug>-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.md

When --download-media is enabled:

• Images are saved to imgs/ next to the markdown file
• Videos are saved to videos/ next to the markdown file
• Markdown media links are rewritten to local relative paths

Conversion Fallback

Conversion order:

1. Try the URL-specific parser layer first when a site rule matches
2. If no specialized parser matches, try Defuddle
3. For rich pages such as YouTube, prefer Defuddle's extractor-specific output (including transcripts when available) instead of replacing it with the legacy pipeline
4. If Defuddle throws, cannot load, returns obviously incomplete markdown, or captures lower-quality content than the legacy pipeline, automatically fall back to the pre-Defuddle extractor
5. If the agent determines the captured result is a login screen, verification screen, or paywall shell, rerun locally with --browser headed --wait and ask the user to complete access before capture
6. If the entire local browser capture flow still fails before markdown can be produced, try the hosted https://defuddle.md/<url> API and save its markdown output directly
7. The legacy fallback path uses the older Readability/selector/Next.js-data based HTML-to-Markdown implementation recovered from git history

CLI output will show:

• Converter: parser:... when a URL-specific parser succeeded
• Converter: defuddle when Defuddle succeeds
• Converter: legacy:... plus Fallback used: ... when fallback was needed
• Converter: defuddle-api when local browser capture failed and the hosted API was used instead

Media Download Workflow

Based on download_media setting in EXTEND.md:

| Setting | Behavior | |---------|----------| | 1 (always) | Run script with --download-media flag | | 0 (never) | Run script without --download-media flag | | ask (default) | Follow the ask-each-time flow below |

Ask-Each-Time Flow

1. Run script without --download-media → markdown saved
2. Check saved markdown for remote media URLs (https:// in image/video links)
3. If no remote media found → done, no prompt needed
4. If remote media found → use AskUserQuestion:

• header: "Media", question: "Download N images/videos to local files?"
• "Yes" — Download to local directories
• "No" — Keep remote URLs

1. If user confirms → run script again with --download-media (overwrites markdown with localized links)

Environment Variables

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | URL_CHROME_PATH | Custom Chrome executable path | | URL_DATA_DIR | Custom data directory | | URL_CHROME_PROFILE_DIR | Custom Chrome profile directory |

Troubleshooting: Chrome not found → set URL_CHROME_PATH. Timeout → increase --timeout. Complex pages → try --wait mode. If markdown quality is poor, inspect the saved -captured.html and check whether the run logged a legacy fallback.

YouTube Notes

• The upgraded Defuddle path uses async extractors, so YouTube pages can include transcript text directly in the markdown body.
• Transcript availability depends on YouTube exposing a caption track. Videos with captions disabled, restricted playback, or blocked regional access may still produce description-only output.
• If the page needs time to finish loading descriptions, chapters, or player metadata, prefer --wait and capture after the watch page is fully hydrated.

Hosted API Fallback

• The hosted fallback endpoint is https://defuddle.md/<url>. In shell form: curl https://defuddle.md/stephango.com
• Use it only when the local Chrome/CDP capture path fails outright. The local path still has higher fidelity because it can save the captured HTML and handle authenticated pages.
• The hosted API already returns Markdown with YAML frontmatter, so save that response as-is and then apply the normal media-localization step if requested.

Extension Support

Custom configurations via EXTEND.md. See Preferences section for paths and supported options.