MCP Server Readability Parser (Python / FastMCP)

Credits/Reference

This project is based on the original server-moz-readability implementation of emzimmer. (For the original README documentation, please refer to the original README.md.)

This Python implementation adapts the original concept to run as python based MCP using FastMCP

Mozilla Readability Parser MCP Server

A Python implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that extracts and transforms webpage content into clean, LLM-optimized Markdown.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Why Not Just Fetch?
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Tool Reference
• Dependencies
• License

Features

• Removes ads, navigation, footers and other non-essential content
• Converts clean HTML into well-formatted Markdown
• Handles errors gracefully
• Optimized for LLM processing
• Lightweight and fast

Why Not Just Fetch?

Unlike simple fetch requests, this server:

• Extracts only relevant content using Readability algorithm
• Eliminates noise like ads, popups, and navigation menus
• Reduces token usage by removing unnecessary HTML/CSS
• Provides consistent Markdown formatting for better LLM processing
• Handles complex web pages with dynamic content

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/jmh108/MCP-server-readability-python.git
cd MCP-server-readability-python

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Quick Start

1. Start the server:

fastmcp run server.py

2. Example request:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/tools/extract_content \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/article"}'

Tool Reference

extract_content

Fetches and transforms webpage content into clean Markdown.

Arguments:

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

Returns:

{
  "content": "Markdown content..."
}

MCP Server Configuration

To configure the MCP server, add the following to your MCP settings file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "readability": {
      "command": "fastmcp",
      "args": ["run", "server.py"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

The server can then be started using the MCP protocol and accessed via the parse tool.

Dependencies

• readability-lxml - Content extraction
• html2text - HTML to Markdown conversion
• beautifulsoup4 - DOM parsing
• requests - HTTP requests

License

MIT License - See LICENSE for details.