3E3eb7988a1663·Apr 27, 2026
shot-scraper is another project in this vein.
https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
In Self-updating screenshotssimonw
shot-scraper
Python2022–2026
simonw / shot-scraper
shot-scraper
A CLI utility for taking screenshots of websites, recording video demos and scraping sites using JavaScript
7Distinct people
11Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.6KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A CLI utility for taking screenshots of websites, recording video demos and scraping sites using JavaScript
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year11 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-03-09 00:42:22 UTC to 2026-04-27 01:37:29 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
11 sourcesI had one of these recently! https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/pull/133/files
They're /incredibly/ rare though.
In Ask HN: I want to create IMDB for open source projectsGot this to work!
shot-scraper https://news.com.au/ \
--init-script 'delete Object.getPrototypeOf(navigator).webdriver' \
--user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:124.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/124.0'
Code and screenshots and prototype --init-script feature here: https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/issues/147#issuecomme...
In Monolith – CLI tool for saving complete web pages as a single HTML fileA command-line utility for taking automated screenshots of websites
2 points · Open discussionThe `Accept` HTTP header is there to prove your frontend is using "dumb" data. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
I think the author is generally correct that all data should be provided in a single request. And to take it a step further, you should be able to change your accept header to JSON to serve an API. API/dumb-frontend aren't mutually exclusive.
In fact, this is what both GitLab and GitHub do. Try it out!
`curl -L https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper` (defaults to text/html)
`curl --header "Accept: application/json" -L https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper`
In Don’t build a general purpose API to power your own front end (2021)Sounds a lot like Simon Willison's open source project shot-scraper
https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
In Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshotsI just released shot-scraper 1.0, which promises CLI interface stability (until 2.0) and introduces a couple of small new features:
- https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/releases/tag/1.0
In Shot-scraper: Automating screenshots for documentationShot-scraper https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
In Monitoring tiny web servicesHere's one from this morning: https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/1718
This one is a bit more involved: https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/issues/18
There are a few good examples linked to at the very bottom of https://simonwillison.net/2022/Jan/12/how-i-build-a-feature/
In Software Mise En PlaceOne tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts.
If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job.
These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the software without me having any involvement at all (like https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper)
In The Joy of Small ProjectsShot-Scraper: Automated website screenshots using GitHub Actions
3 points · Open discussion