fetch-url

Original：🇺🇸 English
Translated

Fetch a single URL and convert its content to Markdown. Use when you need to read a web page, documentation page, or API reference without indexing it. The content is returned as plain Markdown text on stdout.

4installs
Sourcearabold/docs-mcp-server
Added on

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add arabold/docs-mcp-server fetch-url

Tags

Translated version includes tags in frontmatter
url-fetchingmarkdown-conversioncommand-line-toolweb-scrapingplaywright-integration

SKILL.md Content

View Translation Comparison →

Fetch URL

Fetch a single URL and convert its content to clean Markdown. This does not add anything to the documentation index; it is a one-shot read operation.

When to use

  • You need to read a single web page and get its content as Markdown.
  • You want to inspect a documentation page before deciding whether to index it.
  • You need the raw text of a URL for summarisation or analysis.
If you need to index the content for repeated searching, use the docs-manage skill (
scrape
command) instead.

Command

bash
npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url <url> [options]
FlagDefaultDescription
--follow-redirects
true
Follow HTTP redirects
--no-follow-redirects
Disable following redirects
--scrape-mode auto|fetch|playwright
auto
HTML processing strategy
--header "Name: Value"
Custom HTTP header (repeatable)
--quiet
Suppress non-error diagnostics
--verbose
Enable debug logging

Scrape modes

ModeWhen to use
auto
Default. Tries a simple HTTP fetch first, falls back to Playwright for JS-rendered pages.
fetch
Force a plain HTTP fetch. Fastest, but misses content rendered by JavaScript.
playwright
Force a headless browser. Use for SPAs or pages that require JavaScript to render.

Examples

bash
# Fetch a documentation page
npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url https://react.dev/reference/react/useEffect

# Fetch with custom auth header
npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url https://docs.internal.com/api \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer tok_xxx"

# Force Playwright for a JS-heavy page
npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url https://some-spa.dev/docs --scrape-mode playwright

# Disable redirect following
npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url https://example.com/old-page --no-follow-redirects

Output

The command writes the converted Markdown text directly to stdout. The global 
--output
flag is accepted but has no effect because the result is already plain text, not structured data.
Diagnostics and errors go to stderr and are suppressed by default in non-interactive sessions. Use 
--verbose
(or set 
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
) to re-enable them. Use 
--quiet
to suppress all non-error diagnostics regardless of session type.

Tips

  • Pipe the output to a file if you want to save it: 
    npx @arabold/docs-mcp-server@latest fetch-url <url> > page.md
  • Combine with search: fetch a page to read its full content after 
    search
    returns a relevant URL.
  • For pages behind authentication, use 
    --header
    to pass cookies or tokens.