Original video in Chinese.
Key Takeaways
- Web Clipper’s Interpreter can summarize a WeChat article, extract its important points, and save the results to Obsidian alongside the original.
- Desktop and mobile workflows use templates and triggers to reduce repeated setup.
- You can choose providers such as OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or local Ollama and customize the note contents and destination.
- Configuration involves choosing a provider and model, then defining behavior, storage, triggers, note content, and the interpreter context.
- Collecting and preprocessing information this way can reduce the pressure of keeping up with reading.
A two-click desktop workflow
How can you summarize a WeChat public-account article, extract its important information, and save both the AI output and the full original as an Obsidian note?
I recommend Obsidian Web Clipper and its Interpreter feature.
On desktop, I click the extension button in the browser. It recognizes a WeChat article and selects my preset template. The GPT-4o mini model I configured then summarizes the whole article and extracts its key facts.
I click Save. Those two sections appear at the top of the note, followed by the full article. Everything is saved to Obsidian. I clicked only twice; the other steps were automatic.
The mobile demonstration
On mobile, the process I demonstrated was similar. Open the article in Safari, select the button to the left of the address bar, and choose the extension. Its interface resembles the desktop version.
Select Interpret to have the model process the article according to the template. After a few seconds, select Save.
Because summarization and extraction are simple tasks, I chose GPT-4o mini for its speed and low cost. Claude or Gemini are alternatives.
If accessing the major providers directly is difficult, a platform such as OpenRouter offers a range of models. For a local option, the extension also supports Ollama. A smaller Qwen model can be sufficient.
Hello everyone, and welcome. I aim to explain both the why and the how of AI. Follow the channel, or connect with me in newtype. At the time of this episode, more than 600 people had joined as paying members.
This was my third video on Web Clipper. See the earlier episodes for basic operations. I value the plugin because information collection and preprocessing are essential. More than six months earlier, I had written a script and an agent workflow to do this. Now a single extension could handle it, including on mobile.
Configure the provider and model
Select Add Provider and choose the provider. Providers may use different Base URLs; enter the URL and API key.
Then configure the model and associate it with the correct provider. For example, both OpenAI and OpenRouter can offer GPT models.
Enter the Model ID exactly as specified by the provider. If you do not know it, find it in the provider’s dashboard.
Configure the template
Behavior determines whether to create a new note or append to an existing one.
Note Location and Vault specify where to save the note.
Template Triggers determine when to choose the template automatically. My trigger matched WeChat article URLs.
Note Content defines the sections to include. Mine contained Summary, Key Facts, and the full text. Adjust those to your needs.
Interpreter Context specifies the material the model should process. I selected Content to process the whole article. You can instead target a particular portion of a webpage.
With the model and template configured, Web Clipper can select the right template and summarize and extract information automatically. That is useful for reducing everyday reading pressure.
That is all for this episode. If you want to discuss AI, join the newtype community. See you next time.
Continue working with the saved material
Use the Obsidian AI workflow guide (Chinese) to choose how to read and process the material, then the creator’s Wiki guide (Chinese) to turn it into traceable knowledge pages.
This article records a WeChat clipping experiment. Consult Obsidian’s official Web Clipper documentation for browser support and installation. Steps demonstrated on one platform do not necessarily apply to all mobile devices.