Fetch (Mozilla Readability) MCP server

The Mozilla Readability Parser MCP server extracts and transforms webpage content into clean, LLM-optimized Markdown. It uses Mozilla's Readability algorithm to remove ads, navigation, footers, and non-essential elements while preserving the core content structure, returning article title, main content, excerpt, byline, and site name.

Features

• Removes ads, navigation, footers and other non-essential content
• Converts clean HTML into well-formatted Markdown
• Returns article metadata (title, excerpt, byline, site name)
• Handles errors gracefully
• Reduces token usage by removing unnecessary HTML/CSS
• Provides consistent Markdown formatting for better LLM processing

Installation

Installing via Smithery

To install Mozilla Readability Parser for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install server-moz-readability --client claude

Manual Installation

You can also install the server manually using npm:

npm install server-moz-readability

Usage

Tool Reference

The Mozilla Readability Parser MCP server provides a parse function that fetches and transforms webpage content into clean Markdown.

Arguments

{
  "url": {
    "type": "string",
    "description": "The website URL to parse",
    "required": true
  }
}

Returns

{
  "title": "Article title",
  "content": "Markdown content...",
  "metadata": {
    "excerpt": "Brief summary",
    "byline": "Author information",
    "siteName": "Source website name"
  }
}

Setup with Claude Desktop

To use this server with Claude Desktop, add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "readability": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "server-moz-readability"]
    }
  }
}

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "readability" '{"command":"npx","args":["-y","server-moz-readability"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "readability": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "server-moz-readability"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "readability": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "server-moz-readability"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect