SkillsAdd

ratacat/claude-skills

medium-paywall-bypass

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.

First seen Jan 24, 2026

Installation

$ npx skills add ratacat/claude-skills --skill medium-paywall-bypass
View on skills.sh ↗ GitHub repository ↗

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More details

Agent compatibility

Declared targets from SKILL.md / docs. Unmarked agents are not listed — the skill may still install via the CLI.

Claude Code Declared
Cursor Not declared
Codex Not declared
GitHub Copilot Not declared
Windsurf Not declared
Gemini CLI Not declared
Cline Not declared
OpenCode Not declared

Also listed on

Alternate registries and mirrors of this skill.

Repository health

Stars 53
License MIT
Default branch main
Open issues 3
Status Active

Skill metadata

Parsed from SKILL.md frontmatter.

Declared agents claude-code

Package contents

Files included with this skill beyond the listing page.

  • skill md SKILL.md 2,575 B
  • docs SUMMARY.md 258 B

History

  1. First seen on skills.sh
  2. First recorded snapshot · 54 installs

SKILL.md

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='')}"