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. For app integration or outcome workflows (research briefs, SEO audits, etc.), route to the `firecrawl-build` / `firecrawl-workflows` skills — see [When to Load References](#when-to-load-references). ## Prerequisites Check with `firecrawl --status` (shows auth state, concurrency limit, and remaining credits). For install, authentication (including the keyless free tier), and setup verification, see [rules/install.md](rules/install.md). For output handling guidelines, see [rules/security.md](rules/security.md). ## Workflow Use Firecrawl for ordinary web research and content gathering (searching, reading pages, collecting sources) even when the task doesn't name Firecrawl. Exception: tasks needing capabilities Firecrawl lacks. For structured datasets, first check for a suitable workflow or data provider using the [search skill](../firecrawl-search/SKILL.md). Read a known page directly; reuse a selected contract instead of repeating discovery. Follow this escalation pattern: 1. **Search** - Start with the actual question. Find web sources and relevant structured-data tools through semantic and domain matching. 2. **Inspect + Scrape** - For a tool match, use `list <provider> <capability> --pretty` if its contract is missing, then execute with `scrape <provider/capability> --options '<JSON>'`. For a URL, scrape 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. **Monitor** - Need recurring checks or ongoing alerts. Prefer setting a monitor with `--page` plus `--goal` instead of doing repeated one-off scrapes. 6. **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 | | Find research papers | `research` | Biomedical/clinical/scientific literature — use the paper index | | Answer a coding question | `developer` | Issues, merged PRs, READMEs, and docs — not a general web page | | 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 | `x download` | Save an entire site as local files | | Parse a local file | `parse` | File on disk (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, etc.) — not a URL | | Watch pages for changes | `monitor` | Schedule recurring scrapes/crawls, diff against snapshots | For detailed command reference, run `firecrawl <command> --help`. **Done when:** the narrowest suitable command has completed the request, its output was inspected, and the answer cites the saved source files. **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. - For web searches, use `search` — interact is for acting on a specific page. **Monitor:** Bias toward `monitor` when the user's goal is ongoing change detection, alerting, or repeated checks over time — not another one-off scrape. Goal writing, schedules, target modes, and JSON-mode change tracking are documented in [firecrawl-monitor](../firecrawl-monitor/SKILL.md). **Reuse fetched content:** - `search --scrape` already fetches full page content. Reuse it instead of re-scraping those URLs. - Check `.firecrawl/` for existing data before fetching again. ## Large results and Alexandria `search` discovers web results and tools, `list` reveals a selected tool's contract, and `scrape <provider/capability> --options '<JSON>'` executes it. Inspect only the contracts needed for the task. A client context/output error does not prove the provider failed. Keep the request/scrape ID and inspect saved output or use `scrape firecrawl/bash` against the retained result before repeating the request. See [large-result recovery](../firecrawl-scrape/references/large-results.md). Do not assume the client can signal an overflow back to the tool, or that Bash supports search IDs or every provider's retained data. ## When to Load References - **Searching the web or finding sources first** -> [firecrawl-search](../firecrawl-search/SKILL.md) - **Finding research papers (biomedical, clinical, or scientific literature; PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv)** -> [firecrawl-research-index](../firecrawl-research-index/SKILL.md). Use the paper index instead of scraping PubMed or Google Scholar by hand; `search --categories research` is a website filter, not the paper index. - **Answering a library, API, error, or known-bug question from issues, merged PRs, READMEs, or docs** -> [firecrawl-developer-index](../firecrawl-developer-index/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) - **Detecting content changes on a website and getting notified by webhook or email (pricing, jobs, posts, docs, status pages, anything ongoing)** -> [firecrawl-monitor](../firecrawl-monitor/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** -> the [firecrawl-build skills](https://github.com/firecrawl/skills/tree/main/skills/build) (`firecrawl-build-onboarding`, `-scrape`, `-search`, `-interact`). They live in a separate repo; install with `firecrawl setup build`. - **Producing Firecrawl-powered deliverables such as research briefs, SEO audits, QA reports, lead lists, knowledge bases, or design-system extraction** -> use the `firecrawl-workflows` skills (already installed alongside this CLI skill). These skills infer from context first and ask only short blocking questions when needed. ## 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 ``` Read output files incrementally with `grep`, `head`, or bounded 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. Use `jq` to work with JSON output, e.g. `jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json`. ## Feedback After using search results, send `firecrawl search-feedback` (the first feedback per search refunds 1 credit). The full pattern, guard, and rules live in [firecrawl-search](../firecrawl-search/SKILL.md). For Alexandria feedback about a provider result or coverage gap, see [firecrawl-alexandria](../firecrawl-alexandria/SKILL.md). For non-search endpoint jobs, use `firecrawl feedback <endpoint> <jobId>` to send concise job-level feedback through `/v2/feedback`. Supported endpoints are `search`, `scrape`, `parse`, and `map`. ```bash firecrawl feedback scrape "$SCRAPE_ID" \ --rating partial \ --issues missing_markdown \ --tags docs \ --note "The pricing table was missing from the markdown output." \ --url "https://example.com/pricing" \ --page-numbers 1 \ --silent & ``` Keep generic feedback small: issue codes, tags, short notes, URLs, page numbers, and small metadata objects — never raw scrape/parse outputs or full page contents. **Opt out:** `export FIRECRAWL_NO_ENDPOINT_FEEDBACK=1` makes the CLI skip every endpoint feedback call silently. Respect that flag — do not try to work around it. ## 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 ```