Find Oldest Wayback Machine Capture

Find the earliest archived snapshot of a URL from the Wayback Machine.

Usage

npx tsx scripts/oldest-newest.ts <url> --oldest-only [options]

Arguments

Argument	Required	Description
url	Yes	The URL to search for

Options

Option	Description
--full	Include archive URL in output
--json	Output as JSON
--no-cache	Bypass cache and fetch fresh data from API

Output

Default (compact):

1998-12-01 08:00 (9200 days ago)

With --full:

📜 OLDEST:
  1998-12-01 08:00 (9200 days ago)
  https://web.archive.org/web/19981201080000id_/https://example.com

Script Execution

npx tsx scripts/oldest-newest.ts <url> --oldest-only

Run from the wayback plugin directory: ~/.claude/plugins/cache/wayback/

CDX API Endpoint

https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url={URL}&output=json&limit=1&filter=statuscode:200

The limit=1 parameter with default ascending sort returns the oldest capture first.

Caching

CDX API responses are cached for 1 hour. Use --no-cache to bypass.

Related Skills

• wayback-newest - Find the most recent capture
• wayback-range - Show both oldest and newest with archive span
• wayback-list - List all snapshots with pagination