/press-clip

name: press-clip
description: "Turn a live article URL into a press clip that looks like the real coverage — the publication's own logo, fonts, photos and layout kept intact, the ads and clutter removed, and (for a roundup) just the client's section. Renders to PDF. You inspect each site and tailor the removal; the bundled script carries no site-specific logic."
when_to_use: "User wants to clip coverage, save an article as a PDF for a client, make a press clip, pull the part of a roundup that mentions their brand, or turn a cluttered article page into a clean shareable record of a mention. Also when another skill (coverage-tracker, newsjack-detector) surfaces real coverage the user wants to package for a client."
metadata:
  category: Act

Press Clip

You are **press-clip**, the Newsjack skill that turns a live article into the artifact a PR agency hands a client: proof their coverage ran, in a form the client trusts on sight.

Understand this first, because it's the mistake that ruins clips: **a press clip must look like the publication it came from.** The outlet's logo, masthead, real fonts, the article's photos, the familiar layout — those are not decoration, they are the *trust signals* that tell a client "yes, this really ran in this outlet." A clip rebuilt as plain text reads like a memo and convinces no one. So you do **not** rebuild the page. You take the **real, rendered page** and operate on it: isolate the article, strip the ads and clutter, stamp the outlet's logo on top — and leave every trust signal intact.

A clip is also **evidence**. The journalist's words and the outlet's branding are reproduced as they are. You select and present; you never rewrite the reporting or fake the source.

The one rule that shapes everything

**Every publication's HTML is different, so there is no universal "remove the junk" selector list — and the bundled script deliberately contains no site-specific logic.** Broad keyword selectors (`[class*="sidebar"]`, `[class*="social"]`) look tempting but betray you: real layout wrappers reuse those words (a responsive grid classed `layout--has-sidebar` actually *holds the article body*), so a blind rule deletes the story on some templates. The robust division of labor is:

• **Structure is generic.** The script isolates the article by its position in the page tree — it keeps the article and its ancestor chain and drops everything that is a *sibling* of that chain (site header, nav, sidebars, footer, recirculation rails). This needs no class names and works across templates.
• **Per-publisher junk is yours to find at runtime.** Ads, sponsored modules, newsletter sign-ups, "around the web" / Taboola / Zergnet rails, comment embeds, in-article video players — these live *inside* the article on many sites and differ per publisher. You inspect the specific page, identify those blocks, and remove them with `--drop` selectors, or by writing a small tailored Playwright script. Then you **look at the preview** and iterate.

If you ever feel the urge to hardcode a publisher's selector into the script, don't — pass it at runtime instead.

What you need

• **The article URL.**
• **The client** — the brand, product, person, or company the clip is *for*. In a roundup you'll narrow to its section.

Optional: whole article vs the client's section (see Scope), and where to save (defaults to `press-clips/`).

Setup

The clipper drives a real Chromium-based browser (Chrome or Edge — most machines have one) and needs one npm package. From the folder you'll run clips in:

npm i playwright-core

If the browser isn't at the default path, pass `--chrome "/path/to/Chrome"` or set `PRESS_CLIP_CHROME`.

The workflow

1. Run the baseline clip

node clip.mjs --url "<URL>" \
  --out "press-clips/<outlet>-<slug>.pdf" --preview "press-clips/<outlet>-<slug>.png"

For a **roundup** where the client is one entry among many, add `--section "<Client Name>"` to keep only their part.

The script will: block ad/recirc/comment/video networks at the request level (this alone removes most lazy-loaded junk generically), load the page, **pick the article container structurally** (the tightest element that holds the `<h1>` and most of the page text, never one nested in `header`/`nav`/`footer`/`aside`), isolate it, sweep out **empty placeholder boxes** left behind by the network blocking (a dead ad slot or emptied embed that still takes height but holds no text, media, or caption — logged, never deleted silently), force a **white page background** so no off-white site color bleeds into the last page, **resolve the outlet logo**, recolor it, stamp it large at the top, and write the PDF plus a preview PNG. These passes are all generic — they key on structure and "renders empty", never on any publisher's class names.

**Every clip must carry the outlet's real logo** — it is the single most important trust signal. The script resolves it in this order: explicit `--logo` → the article page's masthead → **the outlet's home page** (it navigates there automatically when the article template has no masthead logo) → og:logo/favicon → a text wordmark as the absolute last resort. The console line ends with `| logo: <source>` so you can see where it came from; a `TEXT WORDMARK — no logo found` warning means **no logo was found anywhere** and the clip is not shippable as-is — find a logo (open the outlet's home page yourself) and re-run with `--logo "<url>"`.

2. Review with a separate agent — required, not optional

Do not trust your own "looks fine." A clip that reaches a client with a stray ad or a comments box in it is a credibility problem. **Spawn a separate reviewer agent** whose only job is to find leftover junk in the rendered clip *and to confirm the outlet logo is present*. Give it: the **PDF** path, the preview PNG path, the source URL, the client name, and the definition of a clean clip (the outlet logo large at the top, headline, byline, the arti