scribd-cli

An interactive Windows terminal app (TUI) that takes a Scribd document ID — or a pasted document URL — headless-renders the embed page, fully loads every lazy-loaded page, and saves a visually faithful PDF of the document to ./downloads/<id>.pdf.

scribd-cli is an interactive Windows terminal app (TUI) that takes a Scribd document ID — or a pasted document URL — headless-renders the embed page, fully loads every lazy-loaded page, and saves a visually faithful PDF of the document to ./downloads/.pdf. It uses Node.js and TypeScript with Playwright (Chromium’s native print-to-PDF) for rendering and an Ink terminal UI. It requires Node.js ≥ 20 and auto-downloads a managed Chromium on first run via Playwright’s postinstall, so you never install a browser yourself. Only public documents are supported; there is no login, batch download, or anti-bot evasion.

Install

Requires Node.js ≥ 20. Every option below auto-downloads a managed Chromium (~150 MB) on first run via Playwright’s postinstall — you never install a browser yourself. If that step is ever skipped, run npx playwright install chromium once.

Run it once — no install, no clone

npx github:jparkerweb/scribd-cli

Fetches the repo and launches the app; nothing is added to your PATH.

Install a global scribd-cli command — no clone (recommended)

npx github:jparkerweb/scribd-cli install-global
scribd-cli

The install-global subcommand installs a global copy from the package npx just fetched (npm install -g <dir> under the hood) — reliable, with no compiler needed since dist/ ships prebuilt. npm puts the launcher in its global bin dir (npm config get prefix; on Windows that’s …\AppData\Roaming\npm, already on PATH). Remove it later with npm rm -g scribd-cli.

Avoid npm install -g github:jparkerweb/scribd-cli — on some Windows/npm setups it reports success but silently drops files during extraction (an npm tar bug), leaving a broken command. Use the install-global form above. (Once published to npm, all of this shortens to npx scribd-cli / npm install -g scribd-cli.)

From a clone — development / from source

git clone git@github.com:jparkerweb/scribd-cli.git   # or https://github.com/jparkerweb/scribd-cli.git
cd scribd-cli
npm install

From a clone you can run it with npm run dev, install a global copy with npm install -g ., or create a live-updating global command with npm link (rebuild via npm run build to refresh it).