Web Fetch

web-fetch

Fetch a URL, write the body to $TMPDIR/web-fetch-<runid>/, print the path. Pipe the path through rg / jq / awk to surgically extract what you need.

Why this skill exists

The built-in webfetch tool dumps the whole rendered page into the conversation. For anything bigger than a few KB that drowns the context window. The fix is dead simple: write the page to disk, then grep it.

That is all this skill does. One curl call, one Cloudflare-aware retry, HTML → Markdown via stdlib, save to a temp dir, print the path. No providers, no fallback chain, no fancy machinery. The same shape as pi-webfetch and opencode/webfetch, but as a standalone skill that works from any agent (Claude Code, OpenCode, pi, hermes, openclaw, whatever speaks Bash).

When to use it

Trigger this skill any time the user hands you a URL and the goal is to read its content. Examples:

• "Fetch https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html and tell me about TaskGroup."
• "Read the README at https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-sdk-python."
• "What does this article say about ? "
• "Pull , what's the key change?"
• "Fetch the page and pull out only the deprecated section."

If the URL is https://example.com and you only need 3 lines, the built-in tool is fine. Use this skill when the page is non-trivially large or you want to filter before reading.

How to invoke it

The script is at scripts/web_fetch.py. It needs python3 (3.9+) and ideally curl (auto-detected; urllib fallback works too).

Basic fetch (markdown is default)

python3 <skill_dir>/scripts/web_fetch.py https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html

Stdout prints two lines:

/tmp/web-fetch-20260501-171120-abc123/result.md
/tmp/web-fetch-20260501-171120-abc123/result.json

result.md is the converted markdown. result.json is the same content plus a _meta envelope.

Pick format

python3 web_fetch.py https://example.com --format markdown   # default; HTML auto-converted
python3 web_fetch.py https://example.com --format text       # tags stripped, entities decoded
python3 web_fetch.py https://example.com --format html       # original HTML untouched
python3 web_fetch.py https://example.com --format raw        # bytes-as-they-came (no conversion)

Other flags

The pipe-and-grep pattern

This is the whole point. Resist the temptation to read the entire result.md. Use the path:

# Capture the content path
CONTENT=$(python3 web_fetch.py https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html --print-path content --quiet)

# Find the relevant section
rg -n "TaskGroup" "$CONTENT" | head -20

# Get N lines of context around a match
rg -B2 -A8 "asyncio.run" "$CONTENT" | head -40

# Multiple keywords
rg -in "deprecated|removed|since 3\.1[0-9]" "$CONTENT"

# Grab specific markdown sections (## or ### headings)
awk '/^## TaskGroup/,/^## /' "$CONTENT"

For headers / metadata extraction:

JSON=$(python3 web_fetch.py https://example.com --print-path json --quiet)
jq -r '._meta.final_url, ._meta.content_type, ._meta.bytes' "$JSON"
jq -r '._meta.attempts[] | "\(.user_agent): \(.status) (\(.duration_ms)ms)"' "$JSON"

For Windows PowerShell, see references/pipelines-windows.md.

What gets written

$TMPDIR/web-fetch-<runid>/
├── result.md          rendered markdown (or .txt / .html depending on --format)
├── result.json        { content, _meta }
├── trace.json         _meta only (faster to inspect)
└── raw.html           original response body (or raw.bin for non-text)

Useful when:

• You want to compare rendered markdown against raw HTML (diff result.md raw.html).
• You want to keep the raw bytes around for forensic / replay use.
• You want the structured _meta separate from the content for cheap inspection.

The _meta envelope

Every successful fetch produces this metadata:

{
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "url": "https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html",
  "format": "markdown",
  "ok": true,
  "http_status": 200,
  "content_type": "text/html",
  "final_url": "https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html",
  "converted": true,
  "bytes": 41023,
  "raw_bytes": 198541,
  "attempts": [
    {"user_agent": "browser", "status": 200, "duration_ms": 187, "bytes": 198541,
     "content_type": "text/html", "final_url": "...", "cf_challenge": false}
  ],
  "duration_ms": 199,
  "started_at": "2026-05-01T08:11:20.045449+00:00",
  "raw_path": "/tmp/.../raw.html",
  "content_path": "/tmp/.../result.md",
  "output_dir": "/tmp/.../",
  "transport": "curl"
}

attempts[] shows the actual HTTP calls. If a Cloudflare challenge fired, you will see two entries (browser then honest). If you need to debug a fetch that "looks weird," dump this trace.

Cloudflare retry (built-in)

Some sites return HTTP 403 with a Cloudflare challenge page when called with a browser-like UA but a non-browser TLS fingerprint. The skill detects this case (status 403 or 503 plus body markers like <title>Just a moment...</title> or cf-mitigated) and retries once with a plain web-fetch/<version> UA. Some operators allow honest UAs through. This is the same trick pi-webfetch and opencode/webfetch use.

If both attempts fail, the script exits with code 2 and the trace records both attempts so you can see exactly why.

Limits

• 5 MB response cap. Anything larger is rejected (curl uses --max-filesize; urllib reads N+1 then aborts).
• 120 second timeout cap. --timeout larger than this is silently clamped.
• Read-only. This skill never modifies remote state; all calls are GET.
• Public HTTP/HTTPS only. No file://, no localhost shortcuts, no credentials in the URL.
• No JS rendering. If the page needs a real browser to populate content, you will get the unhydrated shell. For SPAs / aggressively dynamic content, use a headless-browser tool (playwright, firecrawl, etc.) outside this skill.

Key invariants (do not break)

• Content lives on disk, not in the conversation. Quote what is relevant from the file. Never paste a full fetched body into your response unless the user explicitly asked for the full content.
• Always mention the path. When you tell the user "I fetched X", also mention where it is on disk so they can grep it themselves.
• Pipe before reading. When the user asks a specific question about the page, run rg / jq / awk against the saved path and quote only matching lines. Do not pre-load the entire file.
• Trace is machine-readable. If a fetch fails, surface the per-attempt error from trace.json, do not blindly retry the same URL with the same args.

More

• references/pipelines-posix.md - rg/jq/awk worked examples for macOS / Linux / WSL / Git Bash.
• references/pipelines-windows.md - PowerShell + cmd equivalents.
• references/compat.md - per-OS support matrix, Python/curl version floor, Windows / WSL / Alpine / RHEL 7 setup.
• references/troubleshooting.md - 403 / 429 / Cloudflare / TLS / proxy gotchas and how to read the trace.
• README.md - install, packaging, registration into pi/senpi/.agents/skills/, project structure.