SKILL.md

name: medium-paywall-bypass description: Use when user shares a Medium article URL behind a paywall and wants to read the full content. Also use for articles on Medium-hosted publications like towardsdatascience.com, betterprogramming.pub, levelup.gitconnected.com, etc.

Medium Paywall Bypass

Overview

Fetch paywalled Medium articles using free mirror services. Try services in order until one works.

Service Priority

Service	URL Pattern	WebFetch	curl	Notes
Freedium	`https://freedium.cfd/{encoded_url}`	Yes	Yes	Best option, returns content directly
Archive.today	`https://archive.today/latest/{raw_url}`	No	Maybe	Often requires captcha
RemovePaywalls	`https://removepaywalls.com/{raw_url}`	No	No	Redirect page only, needs browser
ReadMedium	`https://readmedium.com/en/{encoded_url}`	No	No	Returns 403 programmatically

{encoded_url} = URL-encoded (slashes become %2F, @ becomes %40, etc.)
{raw_url} = Original URL as-is

For Claude Code: Use Freedium via WebFetch. Other services require browser interaction.

Workflow

1. User provides Medium URL
2. Try Freedium first via WebFetch
3. If blocked/empty, try next service
4. Extract and present article content

Example Usage

Given: https://medium.com/@user/some-article-abc123

WebFetch (recommended):

URL: https://freedium.cfd/https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40user%2Fsome-article-abc123
Prompt: Extract the full article content

curl fallback:

curl -sL "https://freedium.cfd/https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40user%2Fsome-article-abc123"

Medium-Hosted Domains

These domains use Medium's paywall system:

medium.com, *.medium.com
towardsdatascience.com
betterprogramming.pub
levelup.gitconnected.com
javascript.plainenglish.io
uxdesign.cc
hackernoon.com
codeburst.io
itnext.io
proandroiddev.com
infosecwriteups.com

Common Issues

Problem	Solution
Freedium down	Try alternative mirror: `freedium-mirror.cfd`
Article not found	Article may be too new to be cached
Garbled HTML	Use WebFetch with prompt: "Extract the article text and format as markdown"
403/blocked	Try curl with `dangerouslyDisableSandbox: true`

Quick Reference

# URL encoding in Python
from urllib.parse import quote
encoded = quote(url, safe='')

# For WebFetch tool
freedium_url = f"https://freedium.cfd/{quote(medium_url, safe='')}"

Score

Total Score

50/100

Based on repository quality metrics

✓SKILL.md

SKILL.mdファイルが含まれている

+20

○LICENSE

ライセンスが設定されている

0/10

○説明文

100文字以上の説明がある

0/10

○人気

GitHub Stars 100以上

0/15

○最近の活動

3ヶ月以内に更新がある

0/10

○フォーク

10回以上フォークされている

0/5

✓Issue管理

オープンIssueが50未満

+5

✓言語

プログラミング言語が設定されている

+5

○タグ

1つ以上のタグが設定されている

0/5

Reviews

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