web4agent 0.1.0

Free, open-source, async-first web scraping toolkit for LLM agents

web4agent

Free, open-source, async-first web scraping toolkit for LLM agents.
No commercial APIs. No rate-limit bills. Self-hostable.

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Features

Function	Description
read_url	Auto-degradation: fast → crawl4ai → browser → wayback → ddg
read_fast	curl_cffi TLS impersonation + realistic headers; httpx fallback
read_browser	Stealth headless Chromium (patchright); canvas noise; Playwright fallback
read_crawl4ai	Crawl4AI LLM-friendly Markdown output
read_wayback	Wayback Machine archive fallback — no API key needed
read_ddg	DuckDuckGo snippet fallback — no API key needed
read_many	Concurrent batch fetch with deduplication
discover_links	Extract, normalize, and deduplicate hrefs
agent_read_url	Single-URL fetch returning a slim LLM-ready dict
agent_read_urls	Batch fetch with summary stats for LLM context
FastAPI server	Optional HTTP API (/read, /read_many, /discover_links)

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Installation

Minimal (httpx + trafilatura, covers most use cases):

pip install web4agent

With optional extras:

# TLS impersonation + realistic headers (bypass most bot-detection without a browser)
pip install "web4agent[stealth]"

# Headless browser with stealth context (JS-heavy pages, Cloudflare-protected sites)
pip install "web4agent[browser]"
patchright install chromium

# Crawl4AI strategy (LLM-optimised Markdown)
pip install "web4agent[crawl4ai]"

# FastAPI server
pip install "web4agent[server]"

# Everything
pip install "web4agent[all]"
patchright install chromium

From source (development):

git clone https://github.com/lipiji/web4agent
cd web4agent
pip install -e ".[dev]"

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Quick Start

CLI

# Fetch a single page
web4agent read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping

# Batch fetch
web4agent many https://example.com https://python.org --concurrency 5

# Extract links
web4agent links https://docs.python.org/3/ --same-domain --max-links 30

Python

import asyncio
from web4agent import read_url, read_many, discover_links

async def main():
    # Single URL — auto strategy (fast → crawl4ai → browser)
    result = await read_url("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping")
    print(result.title)
    print(result.text[:500])

    # Batch
    results = await read_many(
        ["https://example.com", "https://python.org"],
        concurrency=5,
        strategy="fast",
    )
    for r in results:
        print(r.url, "OK" if r.success else r.error)

    # Links
    links = await discover_links("https://docs.python.org/3/", same_domain=True)
    print(links[:5])

asyncio.run(main())

Proxy rotation

import asyncio
from web4agent import agent_read_urls

async def main():
    proxies = [
        "http://user:pass@proxy1:8080",
        "socks5://proxy2:1080",
    ]
    summary = await agent_read_urls(
        ["https://example.com", "https://python.org"],
        proxies=proxies,
        proxy_mode="round_robin",  # or "random"
    )
    print(summary)

asyncio.run(main())

Or manage rotation manually:

from web4agent import ProxyRotator, read_url

rotator = ProxyRotator(["http://p1:8080", "http://p2:8080"])
proxy = rotator.next()
result = await read_url("https://example.com", proxy=proxy)
rotator.mark_success(proxy) if result.success else rotator.mark_failed(proxy)
print(rotator.stats())

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Agent interface (slim dicts for LLM context)

import asyncio
from web4agent import agent_read_url, agent_read_urls

async def main():
    # Single — returns {"url", "title", "content", "success", "strategy_used", "error"}
    r = await agent_read_url("https://example.com")
    print(r["title"])
    print(r["content"][:300])

    # Batch — returns {"results", "total", "succeeded", "failed"}
    summary = await agent_read_urls(
        ["https://example.com", "https://python.org"],
        concurrency=5,
    )
    print(f"Fetched {summary['succeeded']}/{summary['total']}")
    for item in summary["results"]:
        print(item["url"], item["success"])

asyncio.run(main())

Full working examples: examples/example.py

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Strategies

Strategy	How it works	Best for
fast	httpx + trafilatura (+ BS4 fallback)	Static pages, high concurrency
crawl4ai	Crawl4AI AsyncWebCrawler	Docs, structured Markdown output
browser	Playwright headless Chromium	JS-heavy SPAs, lazy-loaded content
auto	Degrades: fast → crawl4ai → browser	Unknown pages

Auto-degradation triggers when:

• HTTP status ≥ 400
• Extracted text is shorter than MIN_TEXT_LENGTH (default 300 chars)
• Page looks like a JS-only shell (empty #root / #app div)

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Result shape

All read functions return a WebReadResult:

class WebReadResult(BaseModel):
    url: str
    final_url: str | None       # after redirects
    title: str | None
    text: str | None            # plain text
    markdown: str | None        # Markdown version
    html: str | None            # raw HTML
    status_code: int | None
    success: bool
    strategy_used: str | None
    attempts: list[FetchAttempt]
    error: str | None
    fetched_at: str             # ISO-8601 UTC
    elapsed_ms: int | None
    metadata: dict              # e.g. screenshot_b64 for browser reads

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Configuration

Set via environment variables (or a .env file):

Variable	Default	Description
WRT_TIMEOUT	20	HTTP timeout in seconds
WRT_FAST_CONCURRENCY	50	Max concurrent fast requests
WRT_CRAWL4AI_CONCURRENCY	10	Max concurrent crawl4ai requests
WRT_BROWSER_CONCURRENCY	3	Max simultaneous Playwright pages
WRT_MIN_TEXT_LENGTH	300	Min chars to consider a fetch successful
WRT_AGENT_MAX_CONTENT_CHARS	8000	Content truncation limit for agent output
WRT_USER_AGENT	Chrome 124	User-Agent header string

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FastAPI Server

pip install "web4agent[server]"
uvicorn web4agent.server:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Method	Path	Body
GET	/health	—
POST	/read	{"url": "...", "strategy": "auto"}
POST	/read_many	{"urls": [...], "concurrency": 10, "strategy": "auto"}
POST	/discover_links	{"url": "...", "same_domain": true, "max_links": 100}

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Running Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

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Compliance

• robots.txt — not enforced automatically; check it yourself before scraping.
• Rate limiting — use the concurrency parameter; add delays for the same domain.
• Terms of Service — always review a site's ToS before scraping.
• Intended for lawful, authorized use only.

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License

MIT