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import-web-markdown-with-gather

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Import web pages as clean markdown using the local gather CLI. Use when the user asks to fetch a URL as markdown, clip a page into notes, archive readable article text, or convert web content into markdown for context.

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Import Web Markdown With Gather

Purpose

Use gather as the default local tool for converting a URL into readable markdown.

Recommended Defaults

Run gather with these settings unless the user asks otherwise:

gather --metadata-yaml --inline-links --no-paragraph-links "<url>"

Rationale:

  • --metadata-yaml: Adds title/date/source in front matter for downstream indexing.
  • --inline-links: Keeps links close to text for RAG/chunk readability.
  • --no-paragraph-links: Avoids repeated reference blocks after each paragraph.

Required Workflow

  1. Validate input:

    • Accept only http:// or https:// URLs.
    • If input is not a URL, ask for one.

  2. Run gather:

    • Primary command:

      gather --metadata-yaml --inline-links --no-paragraph-links "<url>"

  3. On failure, retry with fallback mode:

    • First fallback:

      gather --metadata-yaml --inline-links --no-paragraph-links \
  --no-readability "<url>"

    • If the page still fails and raw HTML is available, pass HTML directly:

      printf "%s" "$HTML" | gather --html --stdin --metadata-yaml \
  --inline-links --no-paragraph-links

  4. Return markdown text as the main result.

Output Contract

When successful, return:

  • url: original URL
  • title: extracted title when available
  • markdown: full markdown body
  • used_fallback: true if --no-readability or --html path was used

Safety And Limits

  • Do not execute JavaScript from pages.
  • Do not follow login-only pages automatically.
  • Preserve the original URL in output metadata.
  • If output is empty or too short, report a partial extraction warning.

Examples

Basic import:

gather --metadata-yaml --inline-links --no-paragraph-links "https://example.com/article"

Fallback when readability extraction fails:

gather --metadata-yaml --inline-links --no-paragraph-links --no-readability "https://example.com/article"

Optional Variants

  • Add title only:

    gather --title-only "<url>"

  • Plain body without source/title injection:

    gather --no-include-source --no-include-title "<url>"