Rewriting Claw's HTML parser for over the air updates

First, some background. Claw is an Android app for browsing the linkblogging community known as Lobsters. For years, the app relied on a JSON API to interact with the site. Some months ago, I came across a GitHub comment from the site admin explaining that the JSON API is considered a Ruby on Rails misfeature and not something he supports for external integrations. I don’t expect it to ever fully disappear since many more third-party integrations rely on it, but I decided I should probably look into options anyway. I filed an issue with my initial findings then pretty much forgot about it for over half a year. To skip right to the juicy parts, go to The great Zipline migration. The problems with HTML parsing In May 2026 I decided to revisit the problem and decided to make some progress on this front, since I had also added the ability to log into the site through the app now and wanted to start offering more interactive features that would need parsing HTML anyway. The result of it…