# Trafilatura Research

> Use Trafilatura for fast extraction of clean article text, metadata, and Markdown from web pages. Best for research corpora, article cleanup, and preparing sources for summaries or retrieval.

- Skill: `fullrefit/trafilatura-research` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add fullrefit/trafilatura-research`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/fullrefit/trafilatura-research/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Docs & Writing
- License: Apache-2.0
- Author: fullREFIT (https://skillmd.com/u/fullrefit)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/fullrefit/trafilatura-research

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# Trafilatura Research Extraction

## When to use

Use this skill when the task needs clean article text, metadata, or Markdown from public pages, especially for research briefs, corpora, and source cleanup.

## Workflow

1. Check whether `trafilatura` is installed with `scripts/trafilatura_check.py`.
2. Use known URLs from search, last30days, GitHub, or user-provided sources.
3. Extract main text and metadata.
4. Preserve the source URL and extraction date.
5. If extraction fails or returns boilerplate, try Crawl4AI or Firecrawl next.

## Strengths

- Fast and lightweight.
- Good article extraction quality.
- Works from Python or CLI.
- Useful for batch-cleaning research sources.

## Caveats

- Not a browser automation tool.
- Not a full crawler orchestration framework.
- Less suitable for app-like pages, heavy JavaScript, or login-gated pages.

## Bad output

- Treating the extracted text as complete without checking for missing sections.
- Using it for dynamic UI scraping when a browser tool is required.
- Dropping URLs or metadata from research notes.