A web search fails. You retry it. It fails again, same way. That loop wastes turns and gets nothing done, so I built a skill that skips the retry and moves on instead.
Unblock is a Claude Code skill for exactly that moment: a search, scrape, or crawl gets blocked, rate limited, hit with a CAPTCHA, or just returns nothing. Instead of trying the same tool again, it moves to the next one in a fixed order, through 13 free tools, until one gets through.
The order matters
The chain runs most general and robust first, then narrows:
- agent-reach — multi-platform router (Xiaohongshu, X, Bilibili, Reddit, GitHub, YouTube, LinkedIn, RSS, general web)
- last30days — recent discussion from Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, HN, GitHub
- crawler — Jina Reader, then Scrapling stealth browser, turns a URL into clean markdown
- web-scraping — checks the site first, then picks traffic interception, sitemap, API, or DOM scraping
- web-scraping-automation — Playwright/requests plus generic REST and GraphQL calls
- playwright-web-scraper — multi-page structured extraction, rate-limited, respects robots.txt
- web-scraper — multi-strategy extractor for tables, lists, prices, contacts
- site-crawler — straightforward multi-page crawl
- scraping-skills — bundle of academic and ethical scraping techniques
- scrapy-web-scraping — Scrapy framework for large multi-page crawls
- news-extractor — extraction tuned for news and articles across 12 sites
- Scrapling (Python library, last resort) — write and run a short stealth-fetch script
- claude-in-chrome — live browser automation for sites needing login, interaction, or real rendering
A block or an empty result sends it to the next tool. It never retries the same one twice. When the chain finishes, it reports which tool worked, or that all 13 failed.
What’s left out, on purpose
Anything that needs an API key, a paid tier, or an account: firecrawl-scrape, x402-based tools, proxy-vendor skills. The whole chain stays free, no signup anywhere in it.
When to skip it
A plain factual question that a normal web search already answers doesn’t need this. Save it for sites that fight back: paywalls, bot walls, JS-heavy pages, social platforms.
Try it
No install:
“Read https://github.com/obrenoalvim/unblock and follow the Unblock skill.”
As a plugin, available in every session:
/plugin marketplace add obrenoalvim/unblock
/plugin install unblock@unblock
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Then ask for it, or let it trigger on its own next time a search, scrape, or crawl blocks.
Each tool in the chain needs its own install to run that step. Skip an install and the chain moves past it.
Repo: https://github.com/obrenoalvim/unblock (MIT)
What’s the web lookup that blocks you most often?
Ps: I’m building BloodLink, a free platform connecting blood donors to donation campaigns.