omniseek_read
Turn any URL or file into readable text. Automatically handles web pages, PDFs, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, and more, using pagination for long documents and OCR for text in images.
Instructions
Read text from any URL OR document FILE — OmniSeek's single "read this deep" verb. AUTO-ROUTES.
ROUTING: if target is a local filesystem path OR ends with a document extension
(.pdf / .pptx / .docx / .xlsx / .txt / .md / .csv, case-insensitive, a ?query is tolerated) it
routes to the DOCUMENT reader (below); otherwise it routes to the URL reader. start_char /
max_chars window the body on BOTH branches (see below); export_media / ocr apply only
to the document branch (a URL read has no image-extraction path) and are IGNORED on the URL branch.
URL BRANCH: fetch + normalize ONE URL. Tries each registered adapter until one claims it — a
specific article link (a Reddit post, an arXiv paper, a Bluesky post) as a normalized document.
arXiv is two-tier by design: an /abs/<id> URL returns abstract-level metadata (title / authors
/ abstract, a fast lookup), while an /pdf/<id> URL routes to the PDF extractor and returns the
WHOLE body (e.g. 2203.02155v1 → 68 pages of full text). Pass the URL whose depth you want.
vs the open web: reads ONE specific URL you already have; to FIND open-web pages use WebSearch
first, then omniseek_read to normalize the page (a common pairing).
The normalized body is WINDOWED by start_char / max_chars (default 24000), exactly like the
document branch: a big page (a SEC 10-K/20-F is ~2 MB → ~200k chars, a long article) would otherwise
return one blob that overflows the tool channel and is unreadable. When truncated is true, re-call
with start_char bumped by returned_chars to page through the rest. A small page (< max_chars)
returns whole, truncated=false — unchanged from before.
URL branch returns: {"url", "matched": bool, "document": Document as dict | None,
"total_chars", "returned_chars", "start_char", "truncated"} (the last four only when matched). On
matched:false a reason is added: walled (anti-bot challenge -> retry the source via CDP, e.g.
omniseek_search(sources=[...], raw=True, full=True)) vs empty vs blocked, so you can tell "gated, drill it
another way" from "genuinely nothing there".
DOCUMENT BRANCH (pptx / docx / xlsx / pdf / txt / md / csv): read the FILE into readable, structured text — the document counterpart of omniseek_transcribe (speech). Free, keyless, cached. WHERE THE FILE LIVES:
the operator's machine: scp it to OmniSeek host inbox first — scp "" :omniseek-inbox/ then call with "omniseek-inbox/".
Anywhere on the web: just pass the URL (conference slide decks, a shared docx, a PDF). WHAT COMES BACK:
outline= per slide/sheet/page {label, chars, media} — the MAP of the whole document, always complete and tiny;text= the readable content ("## Slide 3" / "## Sheet: budget" / "## Page 5" headers), windowed by start_char/max_chars for big docs (truncated=true + total_chars tell you to re-call with start_char to continue);media/media_total= the image inventory per section. THE IMAGE HALF (be honest about it): a figure deck or scanned doc carries its meaning in IMAGES — text extraction alone is NOT the document. Two ways to read it: omniseek_view delivers the figures to your OWN vision in-band (judging the figure is yours); ocr=True here runs OCR over every embedded image and folds the recognized text-in-pixels (scanned page body, chart labels, palette HEX/RGB codes) into the body under a '图中文字 (OCR)' section — mechanical text transcription, NOT figure interpretation, and labeled as possibly imperfect. Use ocr for text-bearing images (scans, labels); use omniseek_view to SEE the figure. Document branch returns: {source, format, title, outline, text, total_chars, returned_chars, start_char, truncated, media_total, media, media_dir, ocr_images?, cached} — or {source, error, inbox_files?}.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| ocr | No | ||
| target | Yes | ||
| max_chars | No | ||
| start_char | No | ||
| export_media | No |