CLI

npx webforai-cli converts a URL or a local HTML file to clean Markdown. 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.

The CLI is the webforai-cli package; the command it installs is webforai. Run it with npx without installing, or install it once:

npm i -g webforai-cli
webforai https://example.com/article

# Markdown to stdout (reader mode: the main content)
npx webforai-cli https://example.com/article
 
# agent mode: the main content, then the links an agent needs to go on
npx webforai-cli https://example.com/article --extractor agent
 
# write to a file instead
npx webforai-cli https://example.com/article -o article.md
 
# convert a local HTML file
npx webforai-cli ./page.html
 
# machine-readable output
npx webforai-cli https://example.com --json | jq -r .markdown

Flags

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 runtime failure, 2 usage error. API failures include the platform error code and retryAfter (seconds, when supplied) on stderr; invalid_api_key, payment_required and spend_cap_reached name the platform dashboard URL (your --platform-url when set), as does the usage error for a missing API key. Explicit local loaders cannot be combined with --engine or --region; this exits with code 2 before making a request. Interactive mode applies the same flag validation and environment defaults.

Loaders

• fetch — plain HTTP fetch. Fast, no JavaScript execution. Follows <meta http-equiv="refresh"> redirect stubs (an HTTP 200 "Redirecting…" page) like ordinary redirects, up to 3 hops.
• playwright — renders the page in local headless Chromium first. Install the browser 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-cli https://spa.example.com --engine auto
npx webforai-cli https://blocked.example.com --engine proxy-fetch --region jp   # subscription

Batch and crawl

Two subcommands run asynchronous platform jobs end to end: submit, wait (a live progress line on a terminal, quiet when piped), page through the results and write one Markdown file per page into a directory.

export WEBFORAI_API_KEY=wfa_...
 
# crawl a docs site (same-origin), plus llms.txt and llms-full.txt
npx webforai-cli crawl https://docs.example.com -o docs --limit 100 --include '^/docs' --llms-txt
 
# convert a list of URLs (arguments, or one per line with --file; "-" reads stdin)
npx webforai-cli batch https://a.example/post https://b.example/news -o pages
cat urls.txt | npx webforai-cli batch --file - -o pages --json

stdout lists the written files, one per line (or the --json envelope); the progress and a summary — including every failed page with its error code — go to stderr. Failed pages are not billed and do not fail the command; it exits 1 when the job itself failed or no page was converted. rate_limited responses are retried after Retry-After; too_many_jobs (3 concurrent jobs on the free tier, 20 with a subscription) is reported instead.

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": 2,
    "output": "article.md"
}

engine, region and credits appear only when the platform loader ran (screenshotUrl also with --screenshot, which adds 1 credit); output only when -o also wrote a file. A warning appears when the result is probably degraded — most commonly a client-rendered page fetched without JavaScript; rerun with --engine auto or -l playwright when you see one.

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-cli skill
 
# install it via Vercel's skills CLI (agent picker, symlinks, lockfile)
npx webforai-cli 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-cli -i walks through source, loader (including the platform), mode and output path with prompts.