firecrawl

# Firecrawl CLI Search, scrape, and interact with the web. Returns clean markdown optimized for LLM context windows. Run `firecrawl --help` or `firecrawl <command> --help` for full option details. If the task is to integrate Firecrawl into an application, add `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY` to a project, or choose endpoint usage in product code, use the `firecrawl-build` skills. They are already installed alongside this CLI skill when you run `firecrawl init`. ## Prerequisites Must be installed and authenticated. Check with `firecrawl --status`. ``` 🔥 firecrawl cli v1.8.0 ● Authenticated via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY Concurrency: 0/100 jobs (parallel scrape limit) Credits: 500,000 remaining ``` - **Concurrency**: Max parallel jobs. Run parallel operations up to this limit. - **Credits**: Remaining API credits. Each operation consumes credits. If not ready, see [rules/install.md](rules/install.md). For output handling guidelines, see [rules/security.md](rules/security.md). Before doing real work, verify the setup with one small request: ```bash mkdir -p .firecrawl firecrawl scrape "https://firecrawl.dev" -o .firecrawl/install-check.md ``` ```bash firecrawl search "query" --scrape --limit 3 ``` ## Workflow Follow this escalation pattern: 1. **Search** - No specific URL yet. Find pages, answer questions, discover sources. 2. **Scrape** - Have a URL. Extract its content directly. 3. **Map + Scrape** - Large site or need a specific subpage. Use `map --search` to find the right URL, then scrape it. 4. **Crawl** - Need bulk content from an entire site section (e.g., all /docs/). 5. **Interact** - Scrape first, then interact with the page (pagination, modals, form submissions, multi-step navigation). | Need | Command | When | | --------------------------- | --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | | Find pages on a topic | `search` | No specific URL yet | | Get a page's content | `scrape` | Have a URL, page is static or JS-rendered | | Find URLs within a site | `map` | Need to locate a specific subpage | | Bulk extract a site section | `crawl` | Need many pages (e.g., all /docs/) | | AI-powered data extraction | `agent` | Need structured data from complex sites | | Interact with a page | `scrape` + `interact` | Content requires clicks, form fills, pagination, or login | | Download a site to files | `download` | Save an entire site as local files | | Parse a local file | `parse` | File on disk (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, etc.) — not a URL | For detailed command reference, run `firecrawl <command> --help`. **Scrape vs interact:** - Use `scrape` first. It handles static pages and JS-rendered SPAs. - Use `scrape` + `interact` when you need to interact with a page, such as clicking buttons, filling out forms, navigating through a complex site, infinite scroll, or when scrape fails to grab all the content you need. - Never use interact for web searches - use `search` instead. **Avoid redundant fetches:** - `search --scrape` already fetches full page content. Don't re-scrape those URLs. - Check `.firecrawl/` for existing data before fetching again. ## When to Load References - **Searching the web or finding sources first** -> [firecrawl-search](../firecrawl-search/SKILL.md) - **Scraping a known URL** -> [firecrawl-scrape](../firecrawl-scrape/SKILL.md) - **Finding URLs on a known site** -> [firecrawl-map](../firecrawl-map/SKILL.md) - **Bulk extraction from a docs section or site** -> [firecrawl-crawl](../firecrawl-crawl/SKILL.md) - **AI-powered structured extraction from complex sites** -> [firecrawl-agent](../firecrawl-agent/SKILL.md) - **Clicks, forms, login, pagination, or post-scrape browser actions** -> [firecrawl-interact](../firecrawl-interact/SKILL.md) - **Downloading a site to local files** -> [firecrawl-download](../firecrawl-download/SKILL.md) - **Parsing a local file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, etc.)** -> [firecrawl-parse](../firecrawl-parse/SKILL.md) - **Install, auth, or setup problems** -> [rules/install.md](rules/install.md) - **Output handling and safe file-reading patterns** -> [rules/security.md](rules/security.md) - **Integrating Firecrawl into an app, adding `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY` to `.env`, or choosing endpoint usage in product code** -> use the `firecrawl-build` skills (already installed alongside this CLI skill) ## Output & Organization Unless the user specifies to return in context, write results to `.firecrawl/` with `-o`. Add `.firecrawl/` to `.gitignore`. Always quote URLs - shell interprets `?` and `&` as special characters. ```bash firecrawl search "react hooks" -o .firecrawl/search-react-hooks.json --json firecrawl scrape "<url>" -o .firecrawl/page.md ``` Naming conventions: ``` .firecrawl/search-{query}.json .firecrawl/search-{query}-scraped.json .firecrawl/{site}-{path}.md ``` Never read entire output files at once. Use `grep`, `head`, or incremental reads: ```bash wc -l .firecrawl/file.md && head -50 .firecrawl/file.md grep -n "keyword" .firecrawl/file.md ``` Single format outputs raw content. Multiple formats (e.g., `--format markdown,links`) output JSON. ## Working with Results These patterns are useful when working with file-based output (`-o` flag) for complex tasks: ```bash # Extract URLs from search jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json # Get titles and URLs jq -r '.data.web[] | "\(.title): \(.url)"' .firecrawl/search.json ``` ## Parallelization Run independent operations in parallel. Check `firecrawl --status` for concurrency limit: ```bash firecrawl scrape "<url-1>" -o .firecrawl/1.md & firecrawl scrape "<url-2>" -o .firecrawl/2.md & firecrawl scrape "<url-3>" -o .firecrawl/3.md & wait ``` For interact, scrape multiple pages and interact with each independently using their scrape IDs. ## Credit Usage ```bash firecrawl credit-usage firecrawl credit-usage --json --pretty -o .firecrawl/credits.json ```