clean-copy (CLI)

Copy/paste text as clean Markdown or plain text — straight from your terminal. The same converter engine that powers the Clean Copy browser extensions, packaged as a zero-dependency Node.js CLI. Product page: https://cleancopy.tools/

Use cases

| Use case | Command | |----------|---------| | Convert an HTML file to Markdown | clean-copy article.html | | Fetch a web page as readable Markdown | clean-copy -u https://example.com/blog | | macOS: paste dirty HTML, get clean Markdown | pbpaste \| clean-copy \| pbcopy | | Linux: same with xclip | xclip -o \| clean-copy \| xclip -selection c | | Git commit message from PR description | curl -sL https://github.com/... \| clean-copy -t | | Strip formatting from email snippets | clean-copy -t email_dump.html | | CI: convert a URL to Markdown in a workflow | See GitHub Action below |

Install

One-line install (macOS / Linux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mahope/clean-copy-cli/main/tools/install.sh | bash

Installs to ~/.local/bin (add it to PATH if it isn't already). Requires Node.js 16+.

Homebrew (macOS / Linux, recommended)

brew install mahope/tap/clean-copy

Direct download (no package manager)

curl -L https://github.com/mahope/clean-copy-cli/releases/download/v1.5.2/clean-copy-1.5.2.tar.gz \
  | tar xz --strip-components=1
sudo cp clean-copy.js /usr/local/bin/clean-copy

npx — run without installing (no account needed)

npx @mahope/clean-copy -u https://example.com
# or install globally:
npm install -g @mahope/clean-copy

From source

git clone https://github.com/mahope/clean-copy-cli.git
cd clean-copy-cli
# Run in place:
./clean-copy.js -u https://example.com
# Or install globally:
npm link

Requires Node.js 16+. Zero npm dependencies — the converter is pure JavaScript.

Quick start

# Convert HTML from stdin
echo '<h1>Hi</h1><p>Some <b>bold</b> text</p>' | clean-copy
# → # Hi\n\nSome **bold** text

# Convert a local HTML file to Markdown
clean-copy -o output.md article.html

# Fetch a web page and extract readable content as Markdown
clean-copy -u https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown > wikipedia.md

# Plain text mode (strips all Markdown formatting)
clean-copy -t rich_text.html

# macOS: round-trip clipboard through cleaner
pbpaste | clean-copy | pbcopy

# Copy result to clipboard AND save to file
clean-copy -c -o cleaned.md dirty.html

GitHub Action

Convert any URL, local file, or raw HTML to clean Markdown directly in your workflow:

- uses: mahope/clean-copy-cli@v1
  with:
    url: 'https://example.com/article'
  id: clean-copy

- name: Save the result
  run: echo "${{ steps.clean-copy.outputs.markdown }}" > article.md

Convert a local HTML file in the repo:

- uses: mahope/clean-copy-cli@v1
  with:
    file: 'docs/draft.html'
    output_file: 'docs/draft.md'

Convert raw HTML from a CI step:

- uses: mahope/clean-copy-cli@v1
  with:
    html: '<h1>Generated</h1><p>CI output</p>'
    mode: 'markdown'

| Input | Default | Description | |----------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | url | (optional) | URL to fetch and convert (one of url/file/html required) | | file | (optional) | Path to a local HTML file in the repo to convert | | html | (optional) | Raw HTML string to convert directly | | mode | markdown | Output format: markdown or plain | | output_file | (optional) | Write the result to this file path for use in later steps |

Output: markdown — the converted content.

Example: weekly page snapshot as a PR

name: Weekly snapshot
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 6 * * 1'  # Monday 06:00 UTC
jobs:
  snapshot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: mahope/clean-copy-cli@v1
        with:
          url: 'https://example.com/changelog'
          output_file: 'docs/changelog-snapshot.md'
      - uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v6
        with:
          commit-message: 'chore: update changelog snapshot'
          title: 'Weekly changelog snapshot'
          branch: snapshot/changelog

Options

| Flag | Effect | |------|--------| | -t, --text | plain text output instead of Markdown | | -w, --wikilinks | Obsidian-style output: internal links become [[WikiLinks]]; external links, images and code blocks are untouched | | -v, --csv | tables become comma-separated CSV rows (RFC 4180); no tables → cleaned plain text | | -u, --url URL | fetch a web page and extract its main content | | -o, --out FILE | write to FILE instead of stdout | | -c, --copy | also copy the result to the system clipboard | | -q, --quiet | no summary line on stderr | | -V, --version | print version |

What it converts

Headings (#–######), bold/italic, links, images, nested lists, ordered lists, code blocks with entity decoding (< becomes <), blockquotes and tables → GitHub-flavored pipe tables. Smart quotes, em-dashes, zero-width characters and   junk are normalized to clean ASCII.

The --url mode strips scripts, styles, nav/footer boilerplate and keeps the largest content block — good for articles, docs pages and blog posts.

Supported platforms

The --url extraction mode is tested live (in test.js) against real pages from every major publishing platform. If it works on your site, it works — the extractor is CMS-agnostic and never requires anything installed on the server.

| Platform | Live-tested example | |----------|---------------------| | MediaWiki | Wikipedia | | Shopify (custom storefront) | shopify.com/blog | | Wix | wix.com/blog | | Squarespace | blog.squarespace.com | | Ghost | ghost.org/resources · 404media.co | | Substack | Astral Codex Ten · The Pragmatic Engineer | | Astro / static site | astro.build | | WordPress | CSS-Tricks | | Next.js | deno.com/blog | | Eleventy | v8.dev | | Custom static | blog.rust-lang.org |

All of these run in CI on every push — a regression on any platform fails the build.

Privacy

No analytics, no tracking, no telemetry. The only network request ever made is the one you trigger with --url. Everything else runs locally.

Releasing

npm run release -- patch (or minor/major) bumps the version, commits and pushes the tag. CI publishes to npm and creates the GitHub release.

License

MIT

Author

Built by Mads Holst Jensen — developer and technical partner for small businesses, Odense, Denmark. https://mahoje.dk