playpanda

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playpanda

Fetch any webpage as clean, LLM-ready markdown. Single binary, zero config.

Why playpanda?

	playpanda	Crawl4AI	Firecrawl	Jina Reader
Single binary	Zig	Python + pip	Node + API key	curl only
Zero config	Yes	Nearly	No	Yes
Auth built-in	Login + cookies	Hooks/profiles	Dashboard	x-set-cookie
Anti-bot	3-tier auto-escalation	Manual config	Partial	No
API key required	No	No	Yes	Freemium
Avg speed	1.8s	~3s	~5s	~2s
Avg tokens/page	2,868	varies	varies	varies

How It Works

playpanda uses a 3-tier fetch engine that automatically escalates until it gets content:

Tier	Method	Speed	When
1	HTTP + native Zig HTML-to-markdown	~150ms	Default for most sites
2	Lightpanda headless browser	~1.5s	When Tier 1 returns empty/broken content
3	CloakBrowser	~6s	Bot-protected sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, etc.)

If a page is blocked or empty, playpanda automatically tries the next tier.

Install

One-liner (installs binary + all dependencies):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ancs21/playpanda/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

From source

Requires Zig 0.15+:

git clone https://github.com/ancs21/playpanda.git
cd playpanda
zig build -Doptimize=.ReleaseFast
cp zig-out/bin/playpanda ~/.local/bin/

Use as Agent Skill

npx skills add ancs21/playpanda

Dependencies

The installer handles these automatically, or install manually:

• Lightpanda — headless browser for Tier 2
• Python 3 + websockets — Tier 3 stealth browser and cookie harvesting
• Chrome/Chromium — for Tier 3 stealth and login flow

Usage

Fetch a page

playpanda https://example.com                       # markdown to stdout
playpanda https://example.com > article.md          # save to file

Fetch multiple pages

playpanda https://example.com,https://ziglang.org   # multiple URLs, separated by ---

Log in to sites

playpanda profile                                   # opens browser, log in, press Enter

Cookies are saved to ~/.playpanda/cookies.json and used automatically on subsequent fetches.

Upgrade

playpanda upgrade

How Cookies Work

1. playpanda profile opens a browser with CDP enabled. Log in to any site, then press Enter. Cookies are harvested via Chrome DevTools Protocol and saved.

2. Fetch flow: Cookies are automatically loaded and matched by domain. Tier 1 uses HTTP cookie headers, Tier 2 injects via Network.setCookies over CDP.

Bot-Protected Sites

These domains automatically use Tier 3 (stealth browser):

facebook.com, instagram.com, linkedin.com, x.com, twitter.com, medium.com, google.com, youtube.com, tiktok.com, reddit.com, substack.com, threads.net, pinterest.com

Other sites start at Tier 1 and escalate if blocked.

License

Apache 2.0