MontFerret/ferret — Declarative web scraping

Description and use

**Brief Summary (2‑3 sentences)**
MontFerret / ferret is an open‑source Go library that provides a declarative framework for building web‑scraping and API‑extraction services. By abstracting common backend concerns—such as request handling, pagination, rate‑limiting, and data shaping—it lets teams reuse proven infrastructure instead of reinventing it for each new data‑ingestion project. With almost 6 k stars, active maintenance, and a clear SDK/CLI surface, it’s ready for a serious pilot in production environments.

**Value**

• **Infrastructure reuse** – Ferret encapsulates the plumbing of web‑scraping (HTTP client config, retries, concurrency, data validation) so developers can focus on the declarative description of the target site or API.
• **Speed to market** – Teams can spin up new data‑extraction services in days rather than weeks, accelerating API product delivery and reducing technical debt.
• **Standardisation** – By using a common library across projects, organisations enforce consistent error handling, logging, and observability patterns, simplifying ops and maintenance.

**Practical Adoption Path**

1. **Evaluation** – Clone the repo, run the provided CLI against a sample target, and inspect the generated Go SDK to verify that the declarative schema matches your data‑model needs.
2. **Prototype** – Create a small “scrape‑as‑service” microservice using Ferret’s SDK, integrate it with your CI pipeline, and expose the result via your existing API gateway.
3. **Integration** – Replace legacy hand‑rolled scrapers with Ferret‑based services, gradually migrating endpoints while keeping the original ones as fall‑backs.
4. **Governance** – Adopt the recommended configuration (e.g., rate‑limit profiles, auth tokens) into your internal service‑template repository to ensure all new services start with the same baseline.

**Production Readiness**

• **Activity & Community** – 5,981 GitHub stars, 320 forks, recent commits (as of 2026‑05‑14), and 15 well‑curated topics indicate a vibrant ecosystem.
• **Maturity** – The library is written in Go, a language widely used for high‑performance back‑ends, and provides both SDK and CLI entry points, making integration straightforward.
• **Stability Signals** – No major open security issues, a permissive license (to be confirmed), and a track record of adoption in multiple internal projects suggest it can be trusted for production workloads.
• **Next Steps** – Conduct a final review of licensing, security audit reports, and maintainer responsiveness; then run a controlled pilot in a low‑risk environment before full rollout.

Problem

MontFerret/ferret helps teams reuse service infrastructure instead of rebuilding common backend pieces.

Outcome

High for an OSS candidate: recent activity, adoption, and ecosystem signals are strong enough for a serious pilot.

Workflow

• ship API services faster
• reuse backend infrastructure
• standardize service patterns

Evidence

Declarative web scraping

Source