browser-read
Extract readable text from an already-open browser page and return markdown, suitable for pages where web_fetch is blocked or missing auth context.
When to use
web_fetch returned an error or empty content.- Page requires authentication/cookies/session state available only in the browser.
- You need text extraction from Twitter/X or LinkedIn timelines/articles where screenshot/OCR was previously used.
When NOT to use
web_fetch already returns good markdown/text (faster and cheaper).- Purely static pages where normal fetch is sufficient.
Steps
- Navigate to the URL with
browser navigate.
- Read extraction script from
~/clawd/skills/browser-read/extract.js.
- Run
browser act with kind=evaluate and pass the script contents as fn.
- Script returns
{title, content, excerpt, byline, siteName, length} where content is markdown.
- If extraction fails or returns empty content, script falls back to
document.body.innerText.
Example (tool calls)
{
"action": "navigate",
"targetId": "...",
"url": "https://example.com"
}
{
"action": "act",
"targetId": "...",
"kind": "evaluate",
"fn": "(() => { ... return {title, content, excerpt, byline, siteName, length}; })()"
}
Notes
extract.js is a self-contained IIFE so it can be passed directly as the fn value to browser act.- Keep in mind this is a lightweight extractor; it intentionally strips script/style/nav/header/footer/aside/cookie/ad elements before conversion.
