Assess a page

Run analog assess for help choosing how to view a page: Would a structured view help you understand the page, or is local Markdown enough?

Sections and records help you find relevant items and examine their details, whether you want to answer a question, compare items, or export data. Local Markdown is useful when the page’s prose already provides what you need. If you know which representation suits your task, go straight to analog browse with the appropriate mode.

The check runs on your machine, performs no extraction, and makes no backend call. It does not require an account or create a saved result.

On this page

• Read an assessment
• Start with the default steer
• Act on what the page reports
• Reuse or refresh the check

Read an assessment

Assess the same quotes page used in the Quickstart. The first line recommends Markdown for a direct read. The lines below report the page’s approximate Markdown size and pagination.

These answer different questions. The recommendation helps you choose a representation; the pagination note tells you that this view covers only the first page. A Markdown recommendation does not mean the page has no useful records.

This example has no recent saved result for this URL. The output shows the complete assessment response; fetch progress is reported separately. Live page content may change.

Check the quotes page

analog assess https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/

Output

default steer: markdown  → read the page directly

This page as markdown: ~426 tokens (measured). Repeating structure: substantial.
- pagination: this looks like page 1 of a paginated collection (its links reach page 2) — these records cover this page only. Analog can follow the site's own next links and merge the pages into one result; pass --pages 2 to analog browse.
Task-by-task guidance (records vs markdown vs feeds): https://getanalog.io/docs/assess/

Start with the default steer

The recommendation is advice. Choose the path that suits what you want to do with the page:

• markdown → read the page directly suggests local Markdown. This can be enough when the prose already makes the information you need easy to read, or few useful records are expected.
• analog ✓ worth extracting suggests a structured view. Choose this when sections and records will help you locate or inspect the content you need, even for one question.

For the quotes page above, you might follow the Markdown recommendation to read the quotes, or choose records to find quotes by author and compare their tags. Both commands fetch the page and save a result.

Save the page as local Markdown

analog browse https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/ --mode local

Reopen the save with analog view latest --markdown to read the page text. See the complete Markdown response. This path requires no account and makes no backend call.

Use this alternative when records suit your task. It requires a connected account:

View the quotes as records

analog browse https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/

Read the example preview, then inspect and find the quotes you need.

Act on what the page reports

The quotes assessment reports a link to page 2. If you want records from both pages, carry the suggested --pages 2 into analog browse. The assessment itself has not followed that link or collected those records.

The approximate Markdown size describes the full rendered page. It helps compare a direct read with a saved result; it does not estimate what another tool will spend summarizing the page.

Follow the next-page link

analog browse https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/ --pages 2

This requests up to two pages and saves their combined result. Check the resulting coverage notes to see how far the fetch reached. Fetching explains pagination, load-more controls, and collapsed details.

Consider other reported sources

Other pages may report feeds or navigation that change where you look next:

• The page or its platform offers a data feed. Consider the feed when you need a complete catalog or recent items. A declared or responding feed is an available source, not a claim that it is authoritative; compare it with the rendered page when that matters.
• The page exposes navigation or a sitemap. Use the site’s own map when the task belongs on another page or requires many pages rather than one. The assessment lists sitemap locations but does not fetch the sitemap files.
• The page returned no HTML content. There is no page content to view yet. Use Troubleshooting to check the fetch before choosing a mode.

Reuse or refresh the check

When a result for the same URL was saved within the last 15 minutes, analog assess reuses its stored assessment instead of rendering the page again. The output names the saved result and its age. Live feed and sitemap checks still run unless you pass --no-probe.

Feeds and navigation declared in the page itself remain part of the assessment with --no-probe, because they require no additional request. This flag does not turn off the browser’s page fetch or its robots.txt checks.

Check the current page again

analog assess https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/ --fresh

Use --fresh when the page may have changed, or when you want to apply different expansion options instead of reusing the assessment from a recent save.

Skip the additional feed and sitemap checks

analog assess https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/ --no-probe

A recent assessment can still be reused. Add --fresh as well if you want to render the page again without those additional checks.

Assessment during a normal fetch

In its default auto mode, analog browse runs the local part of the same check, attaches the assessment to the result, and still performs the extraction. The Python API reference documents the returned FitAssessment fields.