# Jina Reader > Jina Reader is an open-source API service that converts any URL or web search query into clean, LLM-friendly Markdown output. - Skill: `tools-only/jina-reader` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add tools-only/jina-reader` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/tools-only/jina-reader/raw - Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS) - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: tools-only (https://skillmd.com/u/tools-only) - Updated: 2026-09-29 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/tools-only/jina-reader --- # Jina Reader **Research Date**: 2026-02-23 **Source URL**: **GitHub Repository**: **Version at Research**: Not versioned (continuously deployed from main branch) **License**: Apache 2.0 --- ## Overview Jina Reader is an open-source API service that converts any URL or web search query into clean, LLM-friendly Markdown output. Accessed via a URL prefix (`r.jina.ai/`) or search prefix (`s.jina.ai/`), it requires zero installation and no API key for basic use. The single codebase backing the hosted API is powered by Puppeteer and headless Chrome, enabling full JavaScript/SPA rendering before extraction, and is continuously deployed from the GitHub repository to the `r.jina.ai` endpoint. --- ## Problem Addressed | Problem | Solution | | ------- | -------- | | LLMs cannot process raw HTML directly | Reader converts any URL to clean Markdown with a single `curl` or prefix URL call | | JavaScript-heavy SPAs are inaccessible to simple scrapers | Puppeteer + headless Chrome renders full SPA content before extraction | | Web search results return only title/URL/snippet | `s.jina.ai` fetches and extracts full content from the top 5 search result pages | | PDFs embedded in web pages are not readable by LLMs | Reader renders and extracts text from arbitrary PDF URLs | | Images in pages lack text descriptions for LLMs | VLM-powered image captioning adds `Image [idx]: [caption]` alt tags on demand | | Streaming pages return incomplete content | Streaming mode (`Accept: text/event-stream`) waits for stable page render | | Cached content may be stale for time-sensitive queries | `x-no-cache: true` header bypasses the 1-hour page cache | --- ## Key Statistics | Metric | Value | Date Gathered | | ------ | ----- | ------------- | | GitHub Stars | ~9,800 | 2026-02-23 | | GitHub Forks | ~756 | 2026-02-23 | | License | Apache 2.0 | 2026-02-23 | | Deployment model | Continuously deployed from main | 2026-02-23 | | Search results returned | Top 5 per query | 2026-02-23 | | Page cache lifetime | 3,600 seconds (1 hour) | 2026-02-23 | --- ## Key Features ### Read Mode (`r.jina.ai`) - **Zero-setup URL to Markdown**: Prefix any URL with `https://r.jina.ai/` — no install, no API key for basic use - **SPA support**: Full JavaScript rendering via Puppeteer + headless Chrome handles React, Vue, Angular apps - **PDF extraction**: Reads and converts arbitrary PDFs from any URL (e.g., `r.jina.ai/https://nasa.gov/...pdf`) - **Streaming mode**: Send `Accept: text/event-stream` to receive progressively more complete content chunks - **JSON mode**: Send `Accept: application/json` for structured `{url, title, content}` response ### Search Mode (`s.jina.ai`) - **Grounded web search**: Prepend `https://s.jina.ai/` to a query; retrieves and fully extracts the top 5 result pages - **In-site search**: Restrict results to specific domains with `?site=domain.com` query parameter - **JSON search results**: Returns list of 5 `{title, content, url}` objects in JSON mode ### Request Header Controls - `x-with-generated-alt: true` — VLM-generated captions for all images lacking alt tags - `x-respond-with: markdown|html|text|screenshot` — bypass readability filtering for raw output - `x-target-selector: ` — extract only content matching a CSS selector - `x-wait-for-selector: ` — wait until a specific DOM element appears before extraction - `x-timeout: ` — override default page load timeout - `x-no-cache: true` / `x-cache-tolerance: ` — cache control - `x-proxy-url: ` — route requests through a custom proxy - `x-set-cookie: ` — forward cookies to the target page (bypasses cache) ### Deployment and Architecture - **Live codebase**: The repository IS the production service; every commit to main is deployed to `r.jina.ai` - **Open source (Apache 2.0)**: Fully auditable and self-hostable - **Internal submodule**: `thinapps-shared` handles decorators, logging, and secrets management (not open-sourced but not required for core function) --- ## Technical Architecture ```text User Request | +-- r.jina.ai/ | | | +-- Puppeteer + headless Chrome | | (renders JS, waits for DOM, handles SPAs) | | | +-- Readability filter (or bypass via x-respond-with) | | | +-- Optional: VLM image captioning | | | +-- Output: Markdown / HTML / text / JSON / screenshot | +-- s.jina.ai/ | +-- Web search → top 5 URLs | +-- r.jina.ai applied to each URL in parallel | +-- Output: 5× {title, content, url} (Markdown or JSON) ``` ### Streaming Chunk Model ```text Reader: chunk1 ──────> chunk2 ──────> chunk3 (most complete) | | | v v v LLM: process(chunk1) process(chunk2) process(chunk3) ``` Each subsequent streaming chunk contains more complete content than the previous one; the final chunk is authoritative. --- ## Installation & Usage ### Read — no installation required ```bash # Basic URL to Markdown (no API key) curl https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # SPA or slow page with explicit timeout curl -H 'x-timeout: 30' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # Wait for specific DOM element curl -H 'x-wait-for-selector: #main-content' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # Extract only a specific section curl -H 'x-target-selector: article.post-body' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # JSON output curl -H 'Accept: application/json' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # Streaming mode (most complete result) curl -H 'Accept: text/event-stream' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # With API key for higher rate limits curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer ' https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com # SPA with hash routing (POST method) curl -X POST 'https://r.jina.ai/' -d 'url=https://example.com/#/route' ``` ### Search — no installation required ```bash # Web search → full content from top 5 results curl 'https://s.jina.ai/What%20is%20Claude%20Code%3F' # In-site search curl 'https://s.jina.ai/reader+api?site=jina.ai' # JSON output (5 results) curl -H 'Accept: application/json' 'https://s.jina.ai/What%20is%20Claude%20Code%3F' ``` ### Python integration ```python import httpx # Read a URL response = httpx.get( f"https://r.jina.ai/{url}", headers={"Authorization": "Bearer "} ) markdown_content = response.text # Search the web response = httpx.get( "https://s.jina.ai/claude+code+plugins", headers={ "Accept": "application/json", "Authorization": "Bearer " } ) results = response.json() # list of {title, content, url} ``` --- ## Relevance to Claude Code Development ### Applications - **`research-curator` skill**: Use `r.jina.ai/` instead of `WebFetch` for guaranteed clean Markdown extraction from source URLs during research entry creation - **Agent web grounding**: Agents that need to verify facts or read documentation can use `r.jina.ai/` as a single-line web reader with no library dependencies - **Search-augmented skills**: Any skill requiring live web knowledge can use `s.jina.ai/` for full-content grounded search results (vs. title/snippet from search APIs) ### Patterns Worth Adopting - **URL prefix pattern**: The `r.jina.ai/` prefix idiom is the lowest-friction possible web content integration — a single URL substitution, no client library, no API key for basic usage - **Streaming for completeness**: Using `Accept: text/event-stream` and taking the final chunk ensures maximum content extraction for dynamically loaded pages - **CSS selector targeting**: `x-target-selector` provides surgical extraction when full-page content includes noise (navigation, footers, ads) ### Integration Opportunities - **Replace `WebFetch` in skills**: Reader provides more reliable Markdown output than raw `WebFetch` for complex or JS-rendered pages - **MCP tool wrapper**: A lightweight MCP server wrapping `r.jina.ai` and `s.jina.ai` would give Claude Code a dedicated, reliable web reading tool - **Pre-processing pipeline**: Pipe Reader output through Jina's reranker to score relevance of extracted sections before injecting into context --- ## References - [jina-ai/reader GitHub Repository](https://github.com/jina-ai/reader) (accessed 2026-02-23) - [Jina Reader Live Demo](https://jina.ai/reader#demo) (accessed 2026-02-23) - [Jina Reader API Builder](https://jina.ai/reader#apiform) (accessed 2026-02-23) - [Jina Reader Rate Limits / Pricing](https://jina.ai/reader#pricing) (accessed 2026-02-23) - [Jina Reader for Search Grounding Blog Post](https://jina.ai/news/jina-reader-for-search-grounding-to-improve-factuality-of-llms) (accessed 2026-02-23) - [Apache-2.0 License](https://github.com/jina-ai/reader/blob/main/LICENSE) (accessed 2026-02-23) --- ## Freshness Tracking | Field | Value | | ----- | ----- | | Last Verified | 2026-02-23 | | Version at Verification | Continuously deployed (no versioning) | | Next Review Recommended | 2026-05-23 | **Review Triggers**: - New request header options added - Rate limit or pricing changes - New output format support (beyond markdown/html/text/screenshot/json) - ReaderLM-v2 fully replacing the Puppeteer pipeline - Breaking changes post-Elastic acquisition - Self-hosting documentation added