hexdocs-fetcher

HexDocs Fetcher

Efficiently fetch Elixir library documentation from hexdocs.pm using Claude Code's native WebFetch tool.

Usage

When researching libraries, use WebFetch:

# Fetch library overview
WebFetch(
  url: "https://hexdocs.pm/oban",
  prompt: "Extract the main documentation, including module overview, installation instructions, and key functions. Format as clean markdown."
)

# Fetch specific module docs
WebFetch(
  url: "https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveView.html",
  prompt: "Extract the module documentation including all public functions, their specs, and examples."
)

# Fetch getting started guide
WebFetch(
  url: "https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/getting-started.html",
  prompt: "Extract the complete getting started guide content."
)

Token Efficiency

WebFetch automatically converts HTML to markdown and extracts relevant content:

| Source | Raw HTML | With WebFetch | Benefit | |--------|----------|---------------|---------| | HexDocs page | ~80k tokens | ~15k tokens | 80% reduction | | Phoenix docs | ~120k tokens | ~25k tokens | 79% reduction | | README | ~20k tokens | ~8k tokens | 60% reduction |

Integration with hex-library-researcher

When evaluating libraries, fetch docs efficiently:

# Get library overview with focused extraction
WebFetch(
  url: "https://hexdocs.pm/oban",
  prompt: "Extract: 1) Installation instructions 2) Main features 3) Basic usage example"
)

Common HexDocs URLs

# Library overview
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}

# Module documentation
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}/{Module}.html
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}/{Module.Submodule}.html

# Guides
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}/guides.html
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}/{guide-name}.html

# API reference
https://hexdocs.pm/{library}/api-reference.html

Prompt Strategies

Use focused prompts for better extraction:

# For API docs
prompt: "Extract all public function docs with @spec and examples"

# For guides
prompt: "Extract the complete guide content preserving code examples"

# For troubleshooting
prompt: "Extract any troubleshooting sections, common errors, and FAQs"

# For configuration
prompt: "Extract configuration options and their defaults"

Caching

WebFetch includes automatic 15-minute caching. When fetching the same URL multiple times in a session, results are cached automatically.

For longer persistence, save to planning directory:

# After fetching, write the result to a file
Write(
  file_path: ".claude/plans/{slug}/research/docs/oban.md",
  content: "{extracted content}"
)

Tidewave Alternative

If Tidewave MCP is available, prefer mcp__tidewave__get_docs for exact version-matched documentation:

mcp__tidewave__get_docs(module: "Oban.Worker")

This fetches docs for the exact version in your mix.lock.

Iron Laws

1. NEVER fetch entire HexDocs sites — always target specific modules or guides
2. Use focused prompts — generic fetches waste tokens; specify what to extract
3. Prefer Tidewave when available — exact version match beats generic hexdocs.pm