Web Scraper

Extract structured data from websites using BeautifulSoup and requests - turn any webpage into usable data.

When to Use This Skill

• Competitor research - Scrape pricing, features, positioning
• Lead generation - Extract contact info from directories
• Content audit - Pull headings, links, meta data
• Price monitoring - Track competitor pricing changes
• Data collection - Gather research data from multiple sources

What Claude Does vs What You Decide

Claude Does	You Decide
Structures analysis frameworks	Strategic priorities
Synthesizes market data	Competitive positioning
Identifies opportunities	Resource allocation
Creates strategic options	Final strategy selection
Suggests implementation approaches	Execution decisions

Dependencies

pip install beautifulsoup4 requests pandas click lxml

Commands

Scrape Elements

python scripts/main.py scrape https://example.com --selector "h1,h2,p"
python scripts/main.py scrape https://example.com --selector ".product-price"

Extract Links

python scripts/main.py links https://example.com
python scripts/main.py links https://example.com --internal-only

Extract Emails

python scripts/main.py emails https://example.com
python scripts/main.py emails https://example.com --depth 2

Extract Structured Data

python scripts/main.py structured https://example.com/article --schema article
python scripts/main.py structured https://example.com/product --schema product

Examples

Example 1: Scrape Competitor Pricing

python scripts/main.py scrape https://competitor.com/pricing --selector ".price,.plan-name"

# Output:
# Extracted 6 elements
# 1. Starter - $29/mo
# 2. Pro - $99/mo
# 3. Enterprise - Contact us

Example 2: Extract Article Content

python scripts/main.py structured https://blog.example.com/post --schema article

# Output: article_data.json
# {
#   "title": "How to Scale Your Startup",
#   "author": "Jane Doe",
#   "date": "2024-01-15",
#   "content": "...",
#   "word_count": 1523
# }

CSS Selector Reference

Selector	Description	Example
tag	Element type	h1, p, div
.class	Class name	.price, .title
#id	Element ID	#main-content
tag.class	Tag with class	div.product
tag[attr]	Has attribute	a[href]
parent > child	Direct child	ul > li
tag1, tag2	Multiple	h1, h2, h3

Ethical Scraping Guidelines

1. Check robots.txt - Respect site's scraping policy
2. Rate limit - Don't overload servers (1-2 req/sec)
3. Identify yourself - Use descriptive User-Agent
4. Cache requests - Don't re-scrape unchanged pages
5. Terms of Service - Check if scraping is allowed

Skill Boundaries

What This Skill Does Well

• Structuring strategic analysis
• Identifying market opportunities
• Creating strategic frameworks
• Synthesizing competitive data

What This Skill Cannot Do

• Replace market research
• Guarantee strategic success
• Know proprietary competitor info
• Make executive decisions

Related Skills

• competitor-monitor - Monitor competitor changes
• pdf-extractor - Extract from PDFs

Skill Metadata

• Mode: centaur

category: automation
subcategory: data-extraction
dependencies: [beautifulsoup4, requests, pandas]
difficulty: intermediate
time_saved: 5+ hours/week