defuddle-fetch-mcp-server

A Model Context Protocol server that provides web content fetching capabilities using the Defuddle library. This server enables LLMs to retrieve and process content from web pages, automatically cleaning up the HTML and converting it to clean, readable markdown.

This is a drop-in replacement for the default fetch MCP server that uses Readability. This generally provides better results for most modern webpages.

Comparison

(using this issue)

Default Fetch MCP Defuddle Fetch MCP

Contents of https://github.com/kepano/defuddle/issues/61:

The MCP protocol is a standard for giving AI models access to tools.

There's a default fetch MCP server, which enables AI models to fetch content from websites. This uses Readability.js which is a bit meh, particularly at navigating GitHub (which I try to use it for a lot). I appreciate there is the GitHub MCP, but a more general web browsing solution seems particularly nice here.

Defuddle seems significantly better than Readability.js at processing pages nicely, and the model of having custom extractors to make particular sites work well seems great.

It'd be neat if someone built a defuddle-based fetch MCP server. I might get round to this later if I get frustrated enough with the default fetch MCP 😄 # idea: defuddle-based fetch MCP server · Issue #61 · kepano/defuddle

URL: https://github.com/kepano/defuddle/issues/61

Open

#61

[![@domdomegg](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/4953590?u=c9e631d8135b93c7631d88f2e4bcb6b95e000264&v=4&size=80)](https://github.com/domdomegg)

## Description

The MCP protocol is a standard for giving AI models access to tools.

There's a default fetch MCP server, which enables AI models to fetch content from websites. This uses Readability.js which is a bit meh, particularly at navigating GitHub (which I try to use it for a lot). I appreciate there is the GitHub MCP, but a more general web browsing solution seems particularly nice here.

Defuddle seems significantly better than Readability.js at processing pages nicely, and the model of having custom extractors to make particular sites work well seems great.

It'd be neat if someone built a defuddle-based fetch MCP server. I might get round to this later if I get frustrated enough with the default fetch MCP 😄

Default Fetch MCP	Defuddle Fetch MCP
Contents of https://github.com/kepano/defuddle/issues/61: The MCP protocol is a standard for giving AI models access to tools. There's a default fetch MCP server, which enables AI models to fetch content from websites. This uses Readability.js which is a bit meh, particularly at navigating GitHub (which I try to use it for a lot). I appreciate there is the GitHub MCP, but a more general web browsing solution seems particularly nice here. Defuddle seems significantly better than Readability.js at processing pages nicely, and the model of having custom extractors to make particular sites work well seems great. It'd be neat if someone built a defuddle-based fetch MCP server. I might get round to this later if I get frustrated enough with the default fetch MCP 😄	# idea: defuddle-based fetch MCP server · Issue #61 · kepano/defuddle URL: https://github.com/kepano/defuddle/issues/61 Open #61 `[![@domdomegg](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/4953590?u=c9e631d8135b93c7631d88f2e4bcb6b95e000264&v=4&size=80)](https://github.com/domdomegg)` ## Description The MCP protocol is a standard for giving AI models access to tools. There's a default fetch MCP server, which enables AI models to fetch content from websites. This uses Readability.js which is a bit meh, particularly at navigating GitHub (which I try to use it for a lot). I appreciate there is the GitHub MCP, but a more general web browsing solution seems particularly nice here. Defuddle seems significantly better than Readability.js at processing pages nicely, and the model of having custom extractors to make particular sites work well seems great. It'd be neat if someone built a defuddle-based fetch MCP server. I might get round to this later if I get frustrated enough with the default fetch MCP 😄

Features

Better Content Extraction: Uses Defuddle to remove webpage clutter and extract main content: while keeping things like the page title and key metadata
Flexible Output: Supports both markdown and raw HTML output
Chunked Reading: Supports pagination with start_index and max_length parameters
Rich Metadata: Extracts title, author, publication date, word count, and more

Installation

Follow the instructions on install-mcp, which generates the right config for your MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, VS Code, and more).

Components

Tools

fetch
- Fetches a URL from the internet and extracts its contents as clean, markdown text using Defuddle
- Input parameters:
  - url (string, required): URL to fetch
  - max_length (number, optional): Maximum number of characters to return. Defaults to 5000.
  - start_index (number, optional): Start content from this character index. Defaults to 0.
  - raw (boolean, optional): Get raw content without markdown conversion. Defaults to false.
- Returns cleaned content with metadata including title, author, publication date, word count, domain, and processing time

Contributing

Pull requests are welcomed on GitHub! To get started:

Install Git and Node.js
Clone the repository
Install dependencies with npm install
Run npm run test to run tests
Build with npm run build

To add it to Claude Desktop, run npm run build then add the following configuration to your claude_desktop_config.json:

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "defuddle-fetch": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/path/to/clone/defuddle-fetch-mcp-server/dist/index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Releases

Versions follow the semantic versioning spec.

To release:

Use npm version <major | minor | patch> to bump the version
Run git push --follow-tags to push with tags
Wait for GitHub Actions to publish to the NPM registry.