firecrawl

name

Firecrawl

description

Firecrawl produces cleaner markdown than WebFetch, handles JavaScript-heavy pages, and avoids content truncation. This skill should be used when fetching URLs, scraping web pages, converting URLs to markdown, extracting web content, searching the web, crawling sites, mapping URLs, LLM-powered extraction, autonomous data gathering with the Agent API, or fetching AI-generated documentation for GitHub repos via DeepWiki. Provides complete coverage of Firecrawl v2.8.0 API endpoints including parallel agents, spark-1-fast model, and sitemap-only crawling.

Firecrawl & Jina Web Scraping

Firecrawl vs WebFetch

Prefer firecrawl scrape URL --only-main-content over the WebFetch tool—it produces cleaner markdown, handles JavaScript-heavy pages, and avoids content truncation (>80% benchmark coverage). WebFetch is acceptable as a fallback when Firecrawl is unavailable.

# Preferred approach:
firecrawl scrape https://docs.example.com/api --only-main-content

Token-Efficient Scraping

Inspired by Anthropic's dynamic filtering—always filter before reasoning. This reduced input tokens by ~24% and improved accuracy by ~11% in their benchmarks.

The Principle: Search → Filter → Scrape → Filter → Reason

DO:

Search (titles/URLs only) → Evaluate relevance → Scrape top hits → Filter by section → Reason

DON'T:

Search → Scrape everything → Reason over all of it

Step-by-Step Efficient Workflow

# Step 1: Search — get titles/URLs only (cheap)
firecrawl search "query" --limit 20

# Step 2: Evaluate results, pick 3-5 best URLs

# Step 3: Scrape only those, filter to relevant sections
firecrawl scrape URL1 --only-main-content | \
  python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py \
  --sections "API,Authentication" --max-chars 5000

Post-Processing with filter_web_results.py

Pipe any Firecrawl or Exa output through this script to reduce context before reasoning:

# Extract only matching sections from scraped page
firecrawl scrape URL --only-main-content | \
  python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py --sections "Pricing,Plans"

# Keep only paragraphs with keywords
firecrawl search "query" --scrape --pretty | \
  python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py --keywords "pricing,cost" --max-chars 5000

# Extract specific JSON fields from API output
python3 ~/.claude/skills/exa-search/scripts/exa_search.py "query" --json | \
  python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py --fields "title,url,text" --max-chars 3000

# Combine filters with stats
firecrawl scrape URL --only-main-content | \
  python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py --sections "API" --keywords "endpoint" --compact --stats

Full path: python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/filter_web_results.py Flags: --sections, --keywords, --max-chars, --max-lines, --fields (JSON), --strip-links, --strip-images, --compact, --stats

Other Token-Saving Patterns

• Use --only-main-content to strip navigation and footer boilerplate, reducing token consumption. Omit only when nav/footer content is specifically needed.
• Use firecrawl map URL --search "topic" first to find relevant subpages before scraping
• Use --format links first to get URL list, evaluate, then scrape selectively
• Use --max-chars with exa_contents.py to cap extraction length
• Use --formats summary (Python API script) over full text when you need the gist, not raw content

Claude API Native Tools (for API Agent Builders)

Anthropic's API now offers built-in dynamic filtering tools:

web_search_20260209 / web_fetch_20260209
Header: anthropic-beta: code-execution-web-tools-2026-02-09

These have built-in dynamic filtering via code execution. Use them when building Claude API agents directly. Use Firecrawl/Exa when you need: autonomous agents, batch scraping, structured extraction, domain-specific crawling, or when not on the Claude API.

---

Available Tools

1. Official Firecrawl CLI (firecrawl) — Primary

Setup: npm install -g firecrawl-cli && firecrawl login --api-key $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY

Command	Purpose	Quick Example
scrape	Single page → markdown	firecrawl scrape URL --only-main-content
crawl	Entire site with progress	firecrawl crawl URL --wait --progress --limit 50
map	Discover all URLs on a site	firecrawl map URL --search "API"
search	Web search (+ optional scrape)	firecrawl search "query" --limit 10

Full CLI reference: references/cli-reference.md

2. Auto-Save Alias (fc-save) — Shell Alias

Requires shell alias setup (not bundled with this skill).

fc-save URL
# → Saves to ~/Desktop/Screencaps & Chats/Web-Scrapes/docs-example-com-api.md

3. Python API Script (firecrawl_api.py) — Advanced Features

Command: python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/firecrawl_api.py <command> Requires: FIRECRAWL_API_KEY env var, pip install firecrawl-py requests

Command	Purpose	Quick Example
search	Web search with scraping	firecrawl_api.py search "query" -n 10
scrape	Single URL with page actions	firecrawl_api.py scrape URL --formats markdown summary
batch-scrape	Multiple URLs concurrently	firecrawl_api.py batch-scrape URL1 URL2 URL3
crawl	Website crawling	firecrawl_api.py crawl URL --limit 20
map	URL discovery	firecrawl_api.py map URL --search "query"
extract	LLM-powered structured extraction	firecrawl_api.py extract URL --prompt "Find pricing"
agent	Autonomous extraction (no URLs needed)	firecrawl_api.py agent "Find YC W24 AI startups"
parallel-agent	Bulk agent queries (v2.8.0+)	firecrawl_api.py parallel-agent "Q1" "Q2" "Q3"

Agent models: spark-1-fast (10 credits, simple), spark-1-mini (default), spark-1-pro (thorough)

Full Python API reference: references/python-api-reference.md

4. DeepWiki — GitHub Repo Documentation

~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/deepwiki.sh <owner/repo> [section] [options]

AI-generated wiki for any public GitHub repo. No API key required.

# Overview
~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/deepwiki.sh karpathy/nanochat

# Browse sections
~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/deepwiki.sh langchain-ai/langchain --toc

# Specific section
~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/deepwiki.sh karpathy/nanochat 4.1-gpt-transformer-implementation

# Full dump for RAG
~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/deepwiki.sh openai/openai-python --all --save

5. Jina Reader (jina) — Fallback

Use when Firecrawl fails or for Twitter/X URLs (Firecrawl blocks Twitter, Jina works).

jina https://x.com/username/status/123456

---

Firecrawl vs Exa vs Native Claude Tools

Need	Best Tool	Why
Single page → markdown	firecrawl scrape --only-main-content	Cleanest output
Search + scrape in one shot	firecrawl search --scrape	Combined operation
Crawl entire site	firecrawl crawl --wait --progress	Link following + progress
Autonomous data finding	firecrawl_api.py agent	No URLs needed
Semantic/neural search	Exa exa_search.py	AI-powered relevance
Find research papers	Exa --category "research paper"	Academic index
Quick research answer	Exa exa_research.py	Citations + synthesis
Find similar pages	Exa exa_similar.py	Competitive analysis
Claude API agent building	Native web_search_20260209	Built-in dynamic filtering
Twitter/X content	jina URL	Only tool that works
GitHub repo docs	deepwiki.sh owner/repo	AI-generated wiki

---

Common Workflows

Single Page Scraping

firecrawl scrape https://example.com/page --only-main-content
# Or auto-save: fc-save URL
# Or to file: firecrawl scrape URL --only-main-content -o page.md

Documentation Crawling

# Map first, then crawl relevant paths
firecrawl map https://docs.example.com --search "API"
firecrawl crawl https://docs.example.com --include-paths /api,/guides --wait --progress

Research Workflow

firecrawl search "machine learning best practices 2026" --scrape --scrape-formats markdown

Agent-Powered Research (No URLs Needed)

python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/firecrawl_api.py agent \
  "Compare pricing tiers for Firecrawl, Apify, and ScrapingBee"

---

Troubleshooting

# Check status and credits
firecrawl --status && firecrawl credit-usage

# Re-authenticate
firecrawl logout && firecrawl login --api-key $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY

# Check API key
echo $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY

• Scrape fails: Try jina URL, or add --wait-for 3000 for JS-heavy sites
• Async job stuck: Check with crawl-status/batch-status, cancel with crawl-cancel/batch-cancel
• Disable telemetry: export FIRECRAWL_NO_TELEMETRY=1

---

Reference Documentation

File	Contents
references/cli-reference.md	Full CLI parameter reference (scrape, crawl, map, search, fc-save, jina, deepwiki)
references/python-api-reference.md	Full Python API script reference (all commands, SDK examples)
references/firecrawl-api.md	Firecrawl Search API reference
references/firecrawl-agent-api.md	Agent API (spark models, parallel agents, webhooks)
references/actions-reference.md	Page actions for dynamic content (click, write, wait, scroll)
references/branding-format.md	Brand identity extraction (colors, fonts, UI)

Test Suite

python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/test_firecrawl.py --quick    # Quick validation
python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/test_firecrawl.py            # Full suite
python3 ~/.claude/skills/Firecrawl/scripts/test_firecrawl.py --test scrape  # Specific test