---
title: KMS Web Clipper (clip web pages and screenshots to the Vault)
---

# KMS Web Clipper (clip web pages and screenshots to the Vault)

## What it is

> **Status: shipped.** Clip any web page by URL — or a screenshot by OCR — into the Vault as a Markdown note. Zero copy-paste friction.

The Web Clipper lets you save web content directly into your Vault's `Web Clips/` folder as a clean Markdown note with YAML frontmatter (source URL, timestamp, tags). It fetches the page, extracts the article with Mozilla's Readability library, converts it to Markdown, and creates a new note — all in one step.

For screenshots, it uses AI-powered OCR (Anthropic vision) to extract visible text from the captured image and saves that as a Vault note. This incurs a small API cost (one Anthropic API call).

**Requires KMS enabled.** All entry points are gated behind the `nothariEnabled` setting. If KMS is off, the Quick Launch tab is hidden, the CLI route returns 403, and the screenshot button doesn't appear.

## Where to find it

The fastest path is **Quick Launch** — press your Quick Launch shortcut and switch to the **Web Clip** tab, whose URL field auto-detects a link already on your clipboard. A screenshot button is available from the same place, and there is a command-line route for agents.

## How it behaves

### How to use it

### 1. Quick Launch tab (fastest for URLs)

Open Quick Launch (`Ctrl+Space` or your configured shortcut) → switch to the **Web Clip** tab (scissors icon). The URL field auto-detects if your clipboard contains an `http://` or `https://` URL and pre-fills it. Optionally add comma-separated tags. Press **Enter** or click **Clip page**.

The modal closes immediately (fire-and-forget). The clip happens in the background. If it fails (unreachable URL, non-HTML page, no vault configured), a toast appears in the main window.

### 2. CLI route (for automation and agents)

```
POST /kms/clip
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer <token>

{
  "url": "https://example.com/article",
  "tags": ["research", "ai"],
  "title": "Custom title (optional)",
  "vaultId": "optional-vault-id"
}
```

Returns `201` with `{ note: { id, vaultId, relativePath, ... } }`.

Agents can call this to save research material to the Vault during a session.

### 3. Screenshot "Save to vault" (OCR)

Capture a screenshot with Omniscio's snip tool (`Ctrl+Alt+S` or your configured shortcut). In the annotation editor, click **Save to vault** (only visible when KMS is enabled). The button shows "Extracting..." while the AI reads the screenshot.

The OCR extracts all visible text and generates a short title. The result is saved as a Vault note in `Web Clips/` with tags `screenshot` and `ocr`, and a `screenshot://<recordId>` source URL for provenance.

### What the clipped note looks like

```markdown
---
source: https://example.com/article
clipped: 2026-07-17T19:30:00.000Z
tags:
  - research
  - ai
---

# Article Title

*Author Name* | [Source](https://example.com/article)

The article content in clean Markdown...
```

The note file lands at `Web Clips/<title> <YYYY-MM-DD HHmm>.md`. If a file with that name already exists, a numeric suffix is added automatically.

### Limits and safety

- **URL validation**: only `http://` and `https://` URLs are accepted. Private/local URLs (localhost, 10.x, 192.168.x, etc.) are rejected for SSRF safety.
- **Response size**: 10 MB max. Pages larger than that are rejected.
- **Note body**: 5 MB max (inherited from the note creation service).
- **Fetch timeout**: 15 seconds.
- **Content type**: only `text/html` and `application/xhtml` pages are clipped. PDFs, images, and other content types are rejected with a clear error message.
- **Readability fallback**: if the article extractor can't parse the page (JavaScript-heavy SPAs, paywalled content), the clipper falls back to plain text extraction.

### Troubleshooting

| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---------|-------|-----|
| "Turn on KMS in Settings to use this tab" | KMS is disabled | Settings → Features → Enable KMS, then set a vault folder |
| "The URL does not point to an HTML page" | Non-HTML content type | The clipper only handles HTML pages |
| "Cannot clip from a private or local URL" | SSRF protection | Use a public URL |
| "The page is too large to clip" | Response > 10 MB | Try a lighter page or clip manually |
| "Could not clip that page" (toast) | Fetch failed or no vault | Check the URL is reachable and you have a vault configured |
| "Couldn't extract text from this screenshot" | OCR API error | Check your API key is valid and you have credits |

## Related

The vault the clips land in is described on the [KMS](kms.md) page, and importing a whole existing note collection rather than clipping page by page is the [KMS Obsidian Import Wizard](kms-obsidian-import.md).