Getting started

Get webclaw installed and extract your first page in under a minute. Choose from cargo install, building from source, or Docker.

Installation

From crates.io

The fastest way to install. Requires a working Rust toolchain.

cargo install webclaw

From source

Clone the repository and build all three binaries in release mode.

git clone https://github.com/0xMassi/webclaw
cd webclaw
cargo build --release

The binaries will be at target/release/webclaw, target/release/webclaw-server, and target/release/webclaw-mcp.

Docker

Pull the official image and run the API server in a container.

docker pull ghcr.io/0xmassi/webclaw:latest

docker run -p 3000:3000 ghcr.io/0xmassi/webclaw:latest

The server will be available at http://localhost:3000. Add -e WEBCLAW_API_KEY=your_key to enable authentication.

Your first extraction

The simplest usage: pass a URL. webclaw extracts the main content and outputs clean markdown by default.

webclaw https://example.com

Switch to LLM-optimized output for the most token-efficient representation. This runs a 9-step pipeline that strips images, removes emphasis, deduplicates links, merges stat blocks, and collapses whitespace.

webclaw https://example.com -f llm

Use JSON format to get the full ExtractionResult with metadata, content, word count, and extracted URLs.

webclaw https://example.com -f json

Start the API server

The REST API exposes every extraction feature as an HTTP endpoint. Start the server on any port.

webclaw-server --port 3000

Test it with a scrape request:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/v1/scrape \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com"}'

MCP server

The MCP server lets AI agents use webclaw as a tool. It communicates over stdio transport and works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex, Antigravity, and any MCP-compatible client.

Add webclaw to your Claude Desktop configuration at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webclaw": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@webclaw/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

npx fetches the launcher automatically — no binary path or build step. To run a source build instead, point command at target/release/webclaw-mcp.

The MCP server exposes 14 tools:

Cloud API

For managed infrastructure, sign up at webclaw.io and create an API key from the dashboard. Keys are prefixed with wc_.

curl -X POST https://api.webclaw.io/v1/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer wc_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "formats": ["markdown", "llm"]}'

The cloud API uses the same endpoints and request format as the self-hosted server. Every example in this documentation works with both -- just swap the base URL and add the Authorization header.