WeChat Article Archive

Archive WeChat articles and image notes locally

Archive a WeChat Official Account article to local files:

text

target-folder/
  Article title.md
  assets/
    image-01-xxxx.jpg
    image-02-xxxx.png

Workflow

1. Confirm the user provided both:
   • a mp.weixin.qq.com article URL
   • a destination folder
2. Run the bundled script from this skill directory:

bash

cd "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/wechat-article-archive"
.venv/bin/python scripts/archive_wechat_article.py "<wechat-url>" "<destination-folder>"

3. Read the JSON output and report:
   • Markdown file path
   • assets/ directory path
   • downloaded image count
   • any image download failures

Script

Use scripts/archive_wechat_article.py.

Arguments:

bash

.venv/bin/python scripts/archive_wechat_article.py "<url>" "<output_dir>" [--filename "custom.md"] [--skip-images] [--html-file "page.html"] [--image-timeout 30]

Behavior:

• Parses the article with the bundled extract.js.
• Preserves title, author, account name, publish time, original link, body text, headings, tables, blockquotes, lists, code blocks, and inline image order.
• Downloads body images into <output_dir>/assets/.
• Rewrites Markdown image links to relative assets/... paths.
• Supports WeChat image-note / 小绿书 pages by extracting every top-level image from picture_page_info_list in display order.
• Preserves image-note / 小绿书 body text from the page description, decodes escaped line breaks, and writes the text before the ordered images.
• When picture_page_info_list also appears on a normal long article, prefers the substantive structured HTML body instead of replacing it with the short page description and image list.
• Accepts a browser-saved final page source through --html-file when direct URL fetching is blocked or returns a different page. Keep the original WeChat URL as the first argument so metadata retains the source link.
• If the body contains no inline images but the article has a cover image, inserts and downloads the cover image.
• Prints a JSON result for verification. Check body_text_length, body_img_count, downloaded_image_count, and image_failures; do not treat ok: true alone as proof that the article is complete.

Dependencies

Run once if dependencies are missing:

bash

cd "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/wechat-article-archive"
npm install
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Required commands:

• python3
• node
• npm dependencies declared in package.json

If node is not on PATH but available elsewhere, set:

bash

NODE=/absolute/path/to/node .venv/bin/python scripts/archive_wechat_article.py "<url>" "<output_dir>"

Errors

• 不支持的链接 → URL is not a supported WeChat article link.
• 访问过于频繁 → WeChat blocked the request temporarily; retry later or use another network/session.
• extractor not found → skill files are incomplete.
• Cannot find module ... → run npm install in the skill directory.
• image failures in JSON → Markdown was created, but one or more images could not be downloaded; report the failures and keep the original URLs in Markdown for those images.
• Image-note / 小绿书 pages use a different WeChat page structure from normal articles. Do not treat an empty #js_content as an image-less article when picture_page_info_list is present.

Notes

• Prefer this skill only for local file archiving. Do not use it for IMA upload, knowledge-base import, or WeChat message sending.
• Do not create nested folders per article unless the user asks. The destination folder itself is the article archive folder.
• Do not overwrite unrelated files manually. The script creates or reuses the destination folder and assets/.