title: Article Overview sidebar_label: Overview description: How the article parser saves content for offline reading. sidebar_position: 1#

Article Overview#

The noteleaf article command turns any supported URL into two files on disk:

• A clean Markdown document (great for terminal reading).
• A rendered HTML copy (handy for rich export or sharing).

Both files live inside your configured articles_dir (defaults to <data_dir>/articles). The SQLite database stores the metadata and file paths so you can query, list, and delete articles without worrying about directories.

How Parsing Works#

1. Domain rules first: Each supported site has a small XPath rule file (internal/articles/rules/*.txt).
2. Heuristic fallback: When no rule exists, the parser falls back to the readability-style heuristic extractor that scores DOM nodes, removes nav bars, and preserves headings/links.
3. Metadata extraction: The parser also looks for OpenGraph/JSON-LD tags to capture author names and publish dates.

You can see the currently loaded rule set by running:

noteleaf article --help

The help output prints the supported domains and the storage directory that is currently in use.

Saved Metadata#

Every article record contains:

• URL and canonical title
• Author (if present in metadata)
• Publication date (stored as plain text, e.g., 2024-01-02)
• Markdown file path
• HTML file path
• Created/modified timestamps

These fields make it easy to build reading logs, cite sources in notes, or reference articles from tasks.

Commands at a Glance#

The CLI automatically prevents duplicate imports by checking the URL before parsing.