firecrawl-search

name	firecrawl-search
description	Web search with full page content extraction. Use this skill whenever the user asks to search the web, find articles, research a topic, look something up, find recent news, discover sources, or says "search for", "find me", "look up", "what are people saying about", or "find articles about". Returns real search results with optional full-page markdown — not just snippets.
allowed-tools	["Bash(firecrawl *)","Bash(npx firecrawl *)"]

firecrawl search

Web search with optional content scraping. Returns search results as JSON, optionally with full page content.

When to use

• You don't have a specific URL yet
• You need to find pages, answer questions, or discover sources
• First step in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → interact

Quick start

# Basic search
firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/result.json --json

# Search and scrape full page content from results
firecrawl search "your query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/scraped.json --json

# News from the past day
firecrawl search "your query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/news.json --json

Options

Option	Description
--limit <n>	Max number of results
--sources <web,images,news>	Source types to search
--categories <github,research,pdf>	Filter by category
--tbs <qdr:h|d|w|m|y>	Time-based search filter
--location	Location for search results
--country <code>	Country code for search
--scrape	Also scrape full page content for each result
--scrape-formats	Formats when scraping (default: markdown)
-o, --output <path>	Output file path
--json	Output as JSON

Tips

• --scrape fetches full content — don't re-scrape URLs from search results. This saves credits and avoids redundant fetches.
• Always write results to .firecrawl/ with -o to avoid context window bloat.
• Use jq to extract URLs or titles: jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json
• Naming convention: .firecrawl/search-{query}.json or .firecrawl/search-{query}-scraped.json

Send feedback after every search (refunds 1 credit)

Search costs 2 credits. After you've actually used the results (or decided they were useless), send structured feedback with firecrawl search-feedback <id>. The first feedback per search refunds 1 credit and helps improve search quality. Do this once per search, in the background, after you finish processing the results — it does not block your main task.

Opt out: if FIRECRAWL_NO_SEARCH_FEEDBACK=1 (or FIRECRAWL_DISABLE_SEARCH_FEEDBACK=1) is set, the CLI silently skips the call and never sends anything. Respect that — do not try to work around it. (Team admins can also disable this server-side; the API will return feedbackErrorCode: "TEAM_OPTED_OUT" and the CLI will exit 0 silently.)

Rules to know before you call this:

• Time window: must be sent within ~2 minutes of the search. Late feedback is rejected.
• --missing-content is the most important field. It's a list of specific pieces of content you expected but did not find. One topic per entry — do not pack multiple topics into one string.
• Substantive content required (zero-effort feedback is rejected with HTTP 400):
  • good → must include at least one --valuable-sources entry.
  • partial → must include --valuable-sources or --missing-content.
  • bad → must include --missing-content or --query-suggestions.
• Daily refund cap (per team, per UTC day, default 100 credits). When dailyCapReached: true, stop calling search-feedback for the rest of the UTC day.
• Idempotent: re-submitting for the same search id returns success but no extra refund.
• --silent & is the right pattern — exit code 0 even on failure, so a rejected/expired call never crashes your pipeline.

Read the search response's id:

SEARCH_ID=$(jq -r '.id' .firecrawl/search-react-hooks.json)

Then send feedback. Pick the rating that matches what actually happened:

# Results were useful, with notes on what was still missing
firecrawl search-feedback "$SEARCH_ID" \
  --rating good \
  --valuable-sources '[{"url":"https://react.dev/reference/react/hooks","reason":"Most authoritative"}]' \
  --missing-content '[
    {"topic":"useDeferredValue","description":"No example of useDeferredValue with Suspense"},
    {"topic":"useTransition","description":"No coverage of useTransition for routing"}
  ]' \
  --query-suggestions "Boost react.dev for queries about react hooks" \
  --silent &

# Results were partially useful — multiple missing topics, one entry per topic
firecrawl search-feedback "$SEARCH_ID" \
  --rating partial \
  --missing-content '[
    {"topic":"useDeferredValue"},
    {"topic":"useTransition","description":"Need React 18+ examples"},
    {"topic":"Server Components hooks"}
  ]' \
  --silent &

--silent suppresses output and & runs it in the background so feedback never blocks you.

See also

• firecrawl-scrape — scrape a specific URL
• firecrawl-map — discover URLs within a site
• firecrawl-crawl — bulk extract from a site