How it works

What Attributes does

You supply source material — a supplier description, a specification sheet, product copy — or a web address for Attributes to read. You choose which attributes to capture. Attributes reads the source and returns a typed value for each one, with the passage it came from.

Reading a webpage

Give an address and Attributes fetches the page once, keeps the readable text it found, and works from that. The text is what you see highlighted, and it is what every value points into — so a result stays checkable against something you can read rather than against markup.

Some pages cannot be read this way. A site that builds its content in your browser has nothing in the page itself to work from, and some sites decline automated requests. Attributes says so rather than returning a thin result, and copying the description across and pasting it always works.

What it does not do

It extracts what your source states and nothing else. It does not answer from general knowledge about the product, and it does not go looking for more information. A field your source does not mention comes back as not stated, which is a correct answer rather than a failure — a good run can legitimately contain many of them.

Why every value shows its source

Each extracted value carries the exact passage it was read from, highlighted in your own text. That is what makes a result checkable rather than something you either trust or ignore. Evidence shows where a claim came from — not that the claim is true.

Units

Where a field expects a unit, values are converted arithmetically and the original is kept beside the result: 0.25 kg becomes 250 g, and the source still says 0.25 kg. A unit that cannot be recognised is left alone rather than guessed at.

When the source disagrees with itself

If a description states two incompatible values for one field, both are kept with their own passages and neither is chosen for you. The same applies where a sentence admits more than one reading. Those are the fields worth your attention, and they are marked.