webfetch-mcp

A minimal read-only MCP server that fetches hard-to-scrape web pages via an anti-detection browser and returns clean, token-efficient markdown.

It exposes exactly one tool — fetch(url) → markdown — annotated readOnlyHint: true, so MCP clients that gate writes behind approval prompts (such as a Cloudflare OS MCP gatekeeper) run it without asking.

Why

camofox-mcp exposes 47 browser-automation tools, none annotated read-only, so every fetch queues for manual approval. For the common case — just get me the page text — that friction is needless: a fetch reads a page and mutates nothing. This server declares that honestly and returns the most token-efficient representation available.

Related MCP server: defuddle-fetch-mcp-server

Extraction strategy

camofox-browser has no markdown or readability endpoint — only Playwright ARIA snapshots (a role/name tree, not prose) and arbitrary JS evaluation. This server bundles @mozilla/readability + turndown (via esbuild into IIFE strings at build time) and ships them into the page in a single /evaluate call:

1. Readability — clean main-article markdown (best; ~10× smaller than a snapshot)

2. innerText — real prose, falls back here for SPAs / dashboards Readability can't parse

3. snapshot — ARIA tree, last resort for canvas-heavy or empty-text pages

The output carries a Strategy: marker so the caller knows which ran.

Usage

# Build
npm install
npm run build   # bundles libs + compiles TS

# Run (defaults: port 8090, browser at localhost:9377, no auth)
node dist/src/index.js

Configuration (env)

MCP protocol check

# initialize + tools/list (expect 1 tool, readOnlyHint=true)
curl -X POST localhost:8090/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"t","version":"0.0.0"}}}'

Deployment

Built by a Komodo Build → registry.zxcapp.de/docker/webfetch-mcp, then deployed as a sibling of camoufox-mcp in the camoufox stack. Shares netbird-client's network namespace so it reaches camofox-browser at localhost:9377.

See services/komodo/plans/webfetch-mcp/ in home-infra for the full deploy plan.