A Fast Website Reader MCP

Fetches web pages, strips noise, and converts content to clean Markdown while preserving links. Designed for LLM pipelines with minimal token footprint. Crawl sites locally with minimal dependencies.

MCP Server Configuration

This tool can be used as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server with Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, and other compatible clients.

Installation

Claude Code

claude mcp add read-website-fast -- npx -y github:just-every/mcp-read-website-fast serve

VS Code

code --add-mcp '{"name":"read-website-fast","command":"npx","args":["-y","github:just-every/mcp-read-website-fast","serve"]}'

Cursor

cursor://anysphere.cursor-deeplink/mcp/install?name=read-website-fast&config=eyJyZWFkLXdlYnNpdGUtZmFzdCI6eyJjb21tYW5kIjoibnB4IiwiYXJncyI6WyIteSIsImdpdGh1YjpqdXN0LWV2ZXJ5L21jcC1yZWFkLXdlYnNpdGUtZmFzdCIsInNlcnZlIl19fQ==

JetBrains IDEs

Settings → Tools → AI Assistant → Model Context Protocol (MCP) → Add

Choose “As JSON” and paste:

{"command":"npx","args":["-y","github:just-every/mcp-read-website-fast","serve"]}

Or, in the chat window, type /add and fill in the same JSON—both paths land the server in a single step. 

Raw JSON (works in any MCP client)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "read-website-fast": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:just-every/mcp-read-website-fast", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

Drop this into your client’s mcp.json (e.g. .vscode/mcp.json, ~/.cursor/mcp.json, or .mcp.json for Claude).

Features

• Content extraction using Mozilla Readability (same as Firefox Reader View)
• HTML to Markdown conversion with Turndown + GFM support
• Smart caching with SHA-256 hashed URLs
• Polite crawling with robots.txt support and rate limiting
• Concurrent fetching with configurable depth crawling
• Stream-first design for low memory usage
• Link preservation for knowledge graphs
• Optional chunking for downstream processing

Available Tools

• read_website_fast - Fetches a webpage and converts it to clean markdown
  • Parameters:
    • url (required): The HTTP/HTTPS URL to fetch
    • depth (optional): Crawl depth (0 = single page)
    • respectRobots (optional): Whether to respect robots.txt

Available Resources

• read-website-fast://status - Get cache statistics
• read-website-fast://clear-cache - Clear the cache directory

Development Usage

Install

npm install
npm run build

Single page fetch

npm run dev fetch https://example.com/article

Crawl with depth

npm run dev fetch https://example.com --depth 2 --concurrency 5

Output formats

# Markdown only (default)
npm run dev fetch https://example.com

# JSON output with metadata
npm run dev fetch https://example.com --output json

# Both URL and markdown
npm run dev fetch https://example.com --output both

CLI Options

• -d, --depth <number> - Crawl depth (0 = single page, default: 0)
• -c, --concurrency <number> - Max concurrent requests (default: 3)
• --no-robots - Ignore robots.txt
• --all-origins - Allow cross-origin crawling
• -u, --user-agent <string> - Custom user agent
• --cache-dir <path> - Cache directory (default: .cache)
• -t, --timeout <ms> - Request timeout in milliseconds (default: 30000)
• -o, --output <format> - Output format: json, markdown, or both (default: markdown)

Clear cache

npm run dev clear-cache

Architecture

mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── crawler/        # URL fetching, queue management, robots.txt
│   ├── parser/         # DOM parsing, Readability, Turndown conversion
│   ├── cache/          # Disk-based caching with SHA-256 keys
│   ├── utils/          # Logger, chunker utilities
│   └── index.ts        # CLI entry point

Development

# Run in development mode
npm run dev fetch https://example.com

# Build for production
npm run build

# Run tests
npm test

# Type checking
npm run typecheck

# Linting
npm run lint

License

MIT