CLI

npx webforai converts a URL or a local HTML file to clean Markdown. Since v3 it is non-interactive by default: the Markdown goes to stdout and every log goes to stderr, so the command composes with pipes, scripts and AI agents. The guided wizard is still there behind -i.

# Markdown to stdout
npx webforai@latest https://example.com/article
 
# write to a file instead
npx webforai@latest https://example.com/article -o article.md
 
# convert a local HTML file
npx webforai@latest ./page.html
 
# machine-readable output
npx webforai@latest https://example.com --json | jq -r .markdown

Flags

flag	meaning
`-o, --output <path>`	Write Markdown to a file instead of stdout.
`-l, --loader <loader>`	`fetch` (default for URLs), `playwright`, or `platform`. Local files are detected automatically.
`-m, --mode <mode>`	`default` or `ai` — `ai` strips links, tables and images down to plain text (local conversion only).
`--extractor <name>`	Main-content extraction preset: `auto` (default), `takumi`, `minimal`, or `none` for the whole page.
`--frontmatter`	Prepend YAML front matter built from the page metadata (title, author, canonical URL, …).
`--json`	Print a JSON envelope instead of raw Markdown (below).
`--engine <engine>`	Platform engine: `fetch`, `browser`, `proxy-fetch`, `proxy-browser`. Implies `-l platform`.
`--region <region>`	Platform proxy egress region: `auto`, `us`, `eu`, `uk`, `jp`, `asia`. Implies `-l platform`.
`--screenshot`	Platform browser engines only: also capture a screenshot (expiring URL).
`--api-key <key>`	Platform API key; defaults to `$WEBFORAI_API_KEY`.
`--platform-url <url>`	Platform base URL; defaults to `$WEBFORAI_PLATFORM_URL` or the hosted instance.
`-i, --interactive`	Guided prompt flow.
`-d, --debug`	Verbose logs on stderr.

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 runtime failure, 2 usage error.

Loaders

fetch — plain HTTP fetch. Fast, no JavaScript execution.
playwright — renders the page in local headless Chromium first. Install it once with npx playwright install chromium.
platform — the hosted webforai platform fetches and converts server-side. Useful for JavaScript-heavy pages without a local browser, bot-protected sites (proxy engines), region-pinned fetching, and screenshots.

export WEBFORAI_API_KEY=wfa_...   # from https://platform.webforai.dev/dashboard
npx webforai@latest https://spa.example.com --engine browser
npx webforai@latest https://blocked.example.com --engine proxy-fetch --region jp

JSON output

--json prints a single envelope object:

{
  "source": "https://example.com",
  "loader": "platform",
  "url": "https://example.com/",
  "engine": "browser",
  "region": "auto",
  "markdown": "# …",
  "metadata": { "title": "…" },
  "credits": 5,
  "screenshotUrl": "https://…",
  "output": "article.md"
}

engine, region, credits and screenshotUrl appear only when the platform loader ran; output only when -o also wrote a file.

For AI agents

The CLI ships an Agent Skill that teaches coding agents when and how to use it:

# print the SKILL.md
npx webforai@latest skill
 
# install it via Vercel's skills CLI (agent picker, symlinks, lockfile)
npx webforai@latest skill --install
 
# or install straight from the repository
npx skills add inaridiy/webforai

skill --install forwards --global, --agent <agents>, -y, --copy and --all to npx skills add; --dir <path> writes the file directly without the skills CLI.

Interactive mode

npx webforai -i walks through source, loader (including the platform), mode and output path with prompts — the behavior older versions had by default.