Setup & Installation
openclaw skills install @johstracke/url-fetcher
Or with the ClawHub CLI, for registry-managed skill folders outside a full OpenClaw workspace:
npx clawhub install url-fetcher
What This Skill Does
Fetches web content using Python's standard library with no external dependencies or API keys. Supports HTML retrieval, basic HTML-to-markdown conversion, and safe file writes with path and URL validation built in.
No API key, no pip installs, and no cost make it the fastest way to add web fetching to an agent workflow with zero setup.
When to use it
- Saving articles to local markdown files for offline reading
- Batch-downloading documentation pages into a workspace folder
- Extracting plain text from blog posts for further processing
- Previewing raw HTML of a URL before deciding to save it
- Collecting multiple research pages into organized local files
Example Workflow
Here's how your AI assistant might use this skill in practice.
INPUT
User asks: fetch this article and save it as markdown to my workspace
AGENT
- 1Validates the URL is http/https and not localhost or internal
- 2Runs url_fetcher.py fetch --markdown <url> ~/workspace/article.md
- 3Checks the output path is within allowed directories
- 4Writes converted markdown content to the specified file
OUTPUT
Markdown file saved at ~/workspace/article.md with HTML tags stripped and content converted to plain text