Defuddle - Web Content Extraction

Extract main article content from web pages, removing ads, sidebars, navigation, and other clutter. Output clean Markdown with metadata.

Prerequisites

Before first use, check if defuddle is installed:

command -v defuddle >/dev/null 2>&1 || npm install -g defuddle jsdom

Default Workflow

When user provides a URL, follow this workflow:

Step 1: Extract content as Markdown + JSON metadata

Always use both -m and -j flags to get markdown content with full metadata:

defuddle parse "<url>" -m -j

Step 2: Present a summary to the user

Show the user:

• Title: from JSON title field
• Author: from JSON author field
• Source: domain
• Word count: from JSON wordCount field
• A brief preview (first 2-3 sentences)

Step 3: Ask where to save

If this is the first time using defuddle in this conversation, ask the user:

"Save to which directory? (e.g. ~/Documents, ~/Desktop, or a custom path)"

Remember the user's chosen directory for subsequent uses in the same conversation.

Step 4: Save as Markdown file

Write the file with frontmatter + full content:

---
title: {title}
author: {author}
source: {url}
date: {published or "Unknown"}
clipped: {today's date YYYY-MM-DD}
wordCount: {wordCount}
---

# {title}

{markdown content}

File naming: Use the article title as filename, sanitized for filesystem:

• Replace special characters with spaces
• Trim whitespace
• Example: The Shape of the Essay Field.md

Step 5: Confirm to user

Tell the user the file path where it was saved.

CLI Reference

defuddle parse <source> [options]

Arguments:

• <source> — URL (https://...) or local HTML file path

Options:

Flag	Description
-m, --markdown	Convert content to Markdown
-j, --json	Output as JSON with full metadata
-o, --output <file>	Write to file instead of stdout
-p, --property <name>	Extract single property (title, description, domain, author, published, wordCount, content)
--debug	Verbose logging

JSON Response Fields

When using -j, the response includes:

• title — Article title
• author — Author name
• published — Publication date
• description — Meta description
• content — Extracted Markdown (when -m used)
• domain — Source domain
• favicon — Favicon URL
• image — Featured image URL
• site — Site name
• wordCount — Word count
• parseTime — Processing time in ms

Notes

• Requires Node.js and npm
• jsdom is required as a peer dependency
• Works best with article-style pages (blogs, news, documentation)
• Not designed for SPAs or JavaScript-heavy pages (e.g. WeChat articles need browser rendering)