llama-index-readers-skim

Give your LlamaIndex pipeline the ability to read any URL — clean Markdown, no ads, no nav, no boilerplate. Pays itself per call. No signup, no API key.

llama-index-readers-skim is the official LlamaIndex reader for Skim — the canonical x402 clean reader API. It exposes one reader, SkimReader, that turns any web page into a LlamaIndex Document of agent-ready Markdown plus structured metadata (title, byline, published date, language, excerpt). Each call costs $0.002 in USDC on Base, paid automatically by your local wallet over HTTP 402.

See it before you wire it: try Skim free in your browser — 10 free skims a day, no wallet, no signup. Paste a URL, see exactly what your agent gets back.

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Install

pip install llama-index-readers-skim

This pulls in the x402 client with EVM support, so there's nothing else to install.

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Quickstart (60 seconds)

1. Fund a Base wallet with $1 of USDC

A dollar funds roughly 500 reads. Full step-by-step (with screenshots, for non-crypto-native devs): https://skim402.com/wallet.

Use a fresh wallet, not your personal one. This wallet's private key signs payment authorizations on your machine — treat it like a hot wallet for paying $0.002 tolls, not a savings account.

2. Point the reader at your wallet

export SKIM_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY=0xYOUR_BASE_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY

3. Use it

from llama_index.readers.skim import SkimReader

reader = SkimReader()  # reads SKIM_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY from the environment

documents = reader.load_data(urls=["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_402"])
print(documents[0].text)
print(documents[0].metadata)

The reader signs an EIP-3009 USDC authorization for $0.002, Skim returns clean Markdown, and you get back a Document with the article body as text and the page metadata in metadata. The payment shows up in your wallet's transaction history on BaseScan.

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Build an index from web pages

SkimReader returns standard LlamaIndex Document objects, so it drops straight into any ingestion pipeline:

from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex
from llama_index.readers.skim import SkimReader

reader = SkimReader()
documents = reader.load_data(
    urls=[
        "https://example.com/article-one",
        "https://example.com/article-two",
    ]
)

index = VectorStoreIndex.from_documents(documents)
query_engine = index.as_query_engine()
print(query_engine.query("What do these articles have in common?"))

Each URL costs one $0.002 read, paid automatically as the documents load.

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Output shape

load_data returns a list of Document objects. Each Document has:

• text — the cleaned article body in Markdown.
• metadata — a dict with the source URL plus the page metadata Skim extracted:

{
    "source": "https://example.com/article",
    "title": "Example article",
    "byline": "Jane Doe",
    "publishedAt": "2025-01-15",
    "lang": "en",
    "excerpt": "A short summary...",
}

Empty and None metadata values are dropped. Set include_metadata=False to keep only the source URL.

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Configuration

SkimReader takes the following parameters (all optional except the wallet key):

Parameter	Default	Notes
private_key	$SKIM_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY	Hex private key for the Base wallet that pays for reads. With or without 0x. Use a dedicated wallet — never your personal one.
base_url	https://skim402.com	Override the API base URL. For self-hosting or local development.
max_price_usd	0.01	Hard cap on per-call price in USD. The wallet refuses to sign for anything above this. Skim is $0.002/call.
include_metadata	True	Populate each Document's metadata with the page metadata Skim returns.
timeout	60	Per-request timeout in seconds.

reader = SkimReader(
    private_key="0x...",       # or rely on the env var
    max_price_usd=0.005,
    include_metadata=False,
)

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How it actually works

your pipeline ──► SkimReader ──► POST https://skim402.com/api/v1/read
                     ▲                       │
                     │                       ▼
                     │              402 Payment Required
                     │                  (x402 challenge)
                     │                       │
                     ▼                       │
      x402 signs EIP-3009 USDC ◄─────────────┘
      transfer authorization (locally)
                     │
                     ▼
           retry POST with X-PAYMENT header
                     │
                     ▼
      Skim verifies + settles via Coinbase CDP facilitator
                     │
                     ▼
           200 OK + clean Markdown

Your private key never leaves your machine — it only signs authorizations locally.

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Security

• Dedicated wallet, always. Fund it with only as much USDC as you're willing to spend in a runaway loop. The max_price_usd cap catches accidental price escalations.
• No outbound telemetry from this package. llama-index-readers-skim only talks to skim402.com (or whatever you set as base_url). No analytics, no error reporting, no phone-home.

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Try it without a pipeline

Skeptical? Test the upstream endpoint directly — it'll return a 402 challenge so you can see the protocol in action:

curl -i -X POST https://skim402.com/api/v1/read \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_402"}'

You'll get back HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required with the x402 challenge in the response body.

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Links

• Skim website — https://skim402.com
• Wallet setup guide — https://skim402.com/wallet
• API docs — https://skim402.com/docs
• x402 protocol — https://x402.org
• GitHub — https://github.com/JessieJanie/skim402

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License

MIT