deshell - the web & search in markdown

Fetch web pages as clean Markdown and search the web via the DeShell proxy

DeShell Skill

Gives agents discoverable, consistent access to the DeShell proxy — no manual URL construction, no remembering headers or API keys.

DeShell converts web pages into clean Markdown, saving 60–80% of tokens for LLM consumption.

Setup

1. Get your API key from https://deshell.ai (sign up or use your existing key)

2. Install the deshell CLI manually (one-time):

   bash

   npm install @deshell/mcp
   

3. Set the DESHELL_API_KEY environment variable

Commands

bash

# Fetch any URL as clean Markdown
deshell fetch https://example.com

# Search the web and get results as Markdown
deshell search "best practices for Go error handling"

# Multi-word queries work naturally — no quoting needed
deshell search top 10 AI companies 2025

# Take a screenshot of a web page and return it as an image
deshell screenshot https://example.com

# Render a web page (such as a single page javascript app) before trying to extract markdown
deshell render https://example.com

# Fetch a URL and return its raw content bypassing any attempt to render markdown
deshell raw https://example.com

# Fetch a URL and return its content without using the cache
deshell nocache https://example.com

Options

Environment Variable	Default	Description
DESHELL_API_KEY	(none)	API key
DESHELL_PROXY_URL	https://proxy.deshell.ai/	Proxy base URL
DESHELL_EXTRA_HEADERS	(none)	Comma-separated extra headers in Header-Name:value format

Output

• deshell fetch — returns page content as Markdown on stdout
• deshell search — returns search results with titles, URLs, descriptions, and page content as Markdown on stdout
• Errors are written to stderr; non-zero exit code on failure

Extra Headers

To pass additional DeShell headers, use comma-separated Header-Name:value pairs:

bash

# Single header
DESHELL_EXTRA_HEADERS="X-DeShell-No-Cache:true" deshell fetch https://example.com

# Multiple headers
DESHELL_EXTRA_HEADERS="X-DeShell-No-Cache:true,X-DeShell-Max-Tokens:2000" deshell fetch https://example.com

Examples

bash

# Research a topic
deshell search "OpenClaw agent framework"

# Read documentation
deshell fetch https://docs.github.com/en/rest

# Force fresh fetch (bypass cache)
DESHELL_EXTRA_HEADERS="X-DeShell-No-Cache:true" deshell fetch https://news.ycombinator.com

Fallback — Direct curl

If you prefer not to install npm packages, you can call the proxy directly with curl:

bash

# Fetch a page
curl -s "https://proxy.deshell.ai/https://example.com" \
  -H "X-DeShell-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

# Search the web
curl -s "https://proxy.deshell.ai/search?q=your+query" \
  -H "X-DeShell-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Accept: text/markdown"