Defuddle
Languages and libraries
html parsing library
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
9 positive, 12 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 26 comments about the project. Thread score +0.22.
Idea: 7 for, 0 againstExecution: 2 for, 3 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Markdown extraction quality is the most reliable seen
From 1 comment
Been using the obsidian clipper since it was out and this is a really neat. The per website profile based extraction is awesome. Even if you are not a obsidian user, the markdown…
Tsarp on HN
Better than Readability for many sites
From 2 comments
I was just looking at obsidian web-clipper's source code because I've been quite impressed at its markdown conversion results and came across Defuddle in there. I'll be using for…
creakingstairs on HNExcellent work. A modern alternative to readability was much needed. This is especially useful for building clean web context for LLMs. Thanks for open-sourcing this!
miketromba on HN
Objections
Doesn't work well on many webpages
From 1 comment
Tried it on some webpages, doesnt work well.
ioma8 on HN
Runs into errors in Chrome service workers with linkedom
From 1 comment
This looks great! I would love to give Defuddle a try as a Readability replacement. However, for my use case I want to do in a Chrome extension background script (service…
honodk123 on HN
No tests or datasets to show accuracy
From 1 comment
Really nice work. I appreciate the example with JSDOM as that’s exactly how I use readability, and this looks like a nice drop-in replacement. Question: How did you validate…
binarymax on HN
Requests
Support for Chrome extension service workers
From 1 comment
This looks great! I would love to give Defuddle a try as a Readability replacement. However, for my use case I want to do in a Chrome extension background script (service…
honodk123 on HN
Add tests
From 1 comment
Currently I am relying on manual testing and user feedback, but yes, I'd like to add tests. Defuddle works quite differently from Readability. Readability tends to be overly…
kepano on HN
Bookmarklet packaging
From 1 comment
Since it's written in javascript is there any chance it could be packaged as a bookmarklet?
infogulch on HN
Questions
How to validate accuracy against Readability
From 1 comment
Really nice work. I appreciate the example with JSDOM as that’s exactly how I use readability, and this looks like a nice drop-in replacement. Question: How did you validate…
binarymax on HN
Whether it works on LLM chat share links
From 1 comment
I would love something which reliably extracted a markdown back/forth from all the main LLM providers. I tried `defuddle` on a shared Gemini URL and it returned nothing but the…
pugio on HN
Alternatives named
Readability
From 1 comment
For those not in the know: [Readability](https://github.com/mozilla/readability)
fkfyshroglk on HN
Trafilatura
From 1 comment
Interesting as I was researching this recently and certainly not impressed with the quality of the Readability implementations in various languages. Although Readability.js was…
tmpfs on HN
go-readability and go-trafilatura
From 1 comment
> ...it being Javascript didn't suit my project. If you're using Go, I maintain Go ports of Readability[0] and Trafilatura[1]. They're actively maintained, and for Trafilatura,…
acrophobic on HN
Substance
From 1 comment
I built a similar project called Substance [^0]. Unlike most readability tools that try to solve the problem once and for all, it takes a different approach. It provides a…
novoreorx on HN