EmbaBrain capture

About

EmbaBrain capture turns any web page into clean, readable markdown
with one click — and stays out of your way.

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WHY IS THIS EXTENSION DIFFERENT FROM OTHER
WEBPAGE-TO-MARKDOWN EXTENSIONS?
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Three things set EmbaBrain capture apart from the typical
webpage-to-markdown tool:

(1) FULLY LOCAL. Some page-to-markdown tools send the page content
to their own server for processing, which enables platform-specific
extraction at the cost of sending your reading off-device.
EmbaBrain capture takes the other path: everything happens in your
browser. No network calls, no telemetry, no account, no upsell.
The page content never leaves your machine. This matters if your
work involves reading prospect, competitor, or otherwise sensitive
pages.

(2) TUNED FOR THE HARD PAGES. Generic "page to markdown"
extensions work well on blog posts and news articles but fall
apart on profile pages and modern single-page apps — sidebars,
video players, recommendation widgets, and promoted content all
end up in the output. EmbaBrain capture ships with curated
cleanup rules for those harder sites so a capture comes out as
readable prose, not a jumble of UI chrome. For article-style
pages, it uses Mozilla Readability (the engine behind Firefox's
Reader View) to isolate the main content.

(3) EXTENDABLE WITHOUT CODE. Every cleanup rule is editable in
the Options page, and you can add your own rules for any site
you visit often. A built-in "How to write rules" walkthrough
teaches you the basics — no CSS-selector experience required.
Other extensions let you tweak settings; this one lets you tune
the extraction behaviour per-site without writing JavaScript.

Plus the small things: free with no paid tier, no signup, open
source under Mozilla Public License 2.0, source mirrored to a
public GitHub repository so you can verify exactly what runs in
your browser.

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WHAT IT'S FOR
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• Saving articles and blog posts in a clean, searchable format
• Capturing professional bios from profile-style pages
• Grabbing meeting recap pages, conference write-ups, podcast pages
• Building research files from public web sources

If you work in business development, recruiting, sales, or research,
this gives you a fast path from "browser tab" to "structured markdown
note" without copy-paste gymnastics.

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HOW EXTRACTION WORKS
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For most pages, the extension uses Mozilla Readability — the same
engine behind Firefox's Reader View — to identify the main content of
the page and strip away navigation, sidebars, ads, and other chrome.
The result is converted to markdown by the well-established Turndown
library.

For sites that ship with cleanup rules, the extension uses a
different path: it captures the full page DOM, then applies that
site's cleanup rules to remove its specific chrome — top app bars,
sidebars, feed widgets, video players, promoted content. The result
is much fuller than Readability would produce on a profile-style
page, with the same low-noise quality.

The capture includes YAML frontmatter recording the source URL, the
capture timestamp, and which extraction mode produced the file. This
metadata makes the output ready for downstream tools that consume
markdown with frontmatter.

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CUSTOMIZE FOR ANY SITE
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Every cleanup rule is editable by you. Open the Options page
(Manage rules link in the popup, or chrome://extensions →
Extension options) to:

• See and edit the rules that ship with the extension
• Add your own rules for any site you visit often
• Delete rules you don't want
• Export your rules as JSON for backup or sharing
• Import rules from a JSON file

The Options page includes a "How to write rules" help section with
worked examples. You don't need to know CSS selectors going in — the
help walks you through finding them by right-clicking on a noisy page
element and choosing Inspect.

Rules are removal-only by design. They cannot add content, click
buttons, scroll the page, or do anything other than remove specific
elements or sections you don't want in your captures. This keeps the
extension predictable and safe.

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PERMISSIONS — WHY EACH IS NEEDED
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• activeTab: read the content of the page you're currently viewing,
  but only when you click the extension icon. Without this we can't
  capture anything.

• scripting: inject the Readability and Turndown libraries into the
  current page so the conversion can happen. Runs only after you
  click Extract.

• storage: save your customization rules locally on your device.

The extension does not request access to all sites
(no <all_urls> permission). It only reads pages you explicitly
click the icon on.

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WHAT IT DOES NOT DO
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This extension is intentionally narrow. It does NOT:

• Send any data to a server. Everything stays on your device.
• Run in the background. It activates only when you click the icon.
• Scroll the page or click anything for you. Lazy-loading sites
  require you to scroll down and expand "Show more" sections
  yourself before clicking Extract.
• Bypass login walls or anti-bot protections. It captures only what
  you can already see in your own logged-in browser session.
• Read the password manager, payment fields, or any other sensitive
  browser data. activeTab + scripting are narrowly scoped to the
  current visible page on click.

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PRIVACY
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Zero data collection. Zero network calls. The extension reads page
content only when you explicitly click Extract, and only of the page
you are currently viewing. Your customization rules are stored
locally in your browser's storage and never transmitted anywhere.

Full privacy policy: https://github.com/EmbaBrain/embabrain-extension/blob/main/PRIVACY.md

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PART OF EMBABRAIN
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EmbaBrain capture is the companion tool for EmbaBrain
(https://embabrain.com) — an AI-powered business development brain
for technical founders, startup teams, and BD professionals.

EmbaBrain's vault stores your company's knowledge: contacts,
conversations, pipeline, notes. The AI reads from the vault to help
you draft outreach, update the pipeline, and remember context
across conversations. This extension is how you feed the vault:
read a useful page, click the brain icon, paste the markdown into
your EmbaBrain vault.

You don't need an EmbaBrain account to use this extension; it works
fully on its own. Learn more at https://embabrain.com.

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LIMITATIONS TO KNOW
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• Profile pages and modern single-page apps: scroll to the bottom
  and click any "Show more" buttons before extracting, or you'll
  only capture the visible sections. Many modern sites load content
  lazily as you scroll, and this extension only sees what's
  actually loaded.
• Articles using heavy JavaScript-only rendering may produce thin
  output. Use the "Verbose" mode toggle in the popup to bypass
  Readability and capture the full rendered DOM.

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OPEN STANDARDS
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The output is plain markdown with optional YAML frontmatter — open,
portable, ready to drop into Obsidian, Notion, your favourite text
editor, or any markdown-aware tool. No vendor lock-in.

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SUPPORT
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Found a bug or want a site supported by default? Contact
[email protected].