Firecrawl

---
name: firecrawl
description: Use when working with firecrawl/firecrawl or the installed Firecrawl CLI: installing, updating, logging in, checking status, searching the web through Firecrawl, scraping pages, interacting with pages, crawling sites, mapping URLs, parsing files, running Firecrawl agent jobs, using Firecrawl SDK/API examples, or configuring optional firecrawl-mcp for an MCP client. Prefer this for Firecrawl hosted API and CLI workflows. Do not use for generic web search when the host AI has native search, or for local Crawl4AI workflows.
aliases:
  - firecrawl
  - firecrawl-cli
  - firecrawl-mcp
  - firecrawl-search
  - firecrawl-scrape
  - firecrawl-crawl
  - firecrawl-map
  - firecrawl-interact
  - firecrawl-agent
  - firecrawl-parse
  - firecrawl-login
  - firecrawl-api
  - firecrawl-sdk
  - firecrawl-repo
---

# Firecrawl Universal Adapter

## Source

- Upstream repository: `https://github.com/firecrawl/firecrawl`
- Local source checkout: `%USERPROFILE%\.firecrawl-source\firecrawl`
- Primary CLI package: `firecrawl-cli`
- Primary CLI command: `firecrawl`
- Optional MCP package: `firecrawl-mcp`
- Router delegator: `skill-router firecrawl`
- Universal stack source registry: `%USERPROFILE%\.universal-ai-stack\config\source-integrations.json`

## Operating Model

Use Firecrawl as a shared hosted web-data CLI/API integration, not as copied
skill bodies or a per-agent install. The universal install uses:

- one shallow upstream source checkout for README-grounded reference,
- one global npm CLI install of `firecrawl-cli`,
- this canonical skill for routing and workflow instructions,
- compact `skill-router` wrappers in each AI client,
- optional `firecrawl-mcp` only for clients that specifically need an MCP server.

No persistent MCP bridge is required for normal Firecrawl work. Use direct CLI
or SDK/API calls first.

## Safety And State Boundaries

Never commit or paste:

- `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY`,
- Firecrawl account, credit, billing, or workspace details,
- local auth/session files created by `firecrawl login`,
- project-local `.firecrawl/` caches and generated outputs,
- generated scrape/crawl output from private or authenticated pages,
- browser profile data, cookies, screenshots, or downloaded private content.

Use the user's Firecrawl account only after they authenticate with
`firecrawl login`, `firecrawl login --browser`, or a local `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY`.
Respect robots.txt, site terms, auth boundaries, and rate limits. Ask before
using authenticated pages, proxies, high-volume crawls, or batch scraping.

Prefer host-native web search for quick current lookups when available. Use
Firecrawl when the task needs Firecrawl-specific search with scraped result
content, hosted scraping, structured extraction, interact actions, URL mapping,
site crawling, file parsing, or Firecrawl MCP/SDK integration.

## Install And Health

Check local state:

```powershell
skill-router firecrawl status
```

Install or update the CLI:

```powershell
skill-router firecrawl install
```

Update the source checkout and reinstall the CLI:

```powershell
skill-router firecrawl update
```

Authenticate when needed:

```powershell
firecrawl login --browser
```

Check account/API readiness without exposing secrets:

```powershell
firecrawl --status
```

Show optional MCP setup notes:

```powershell
skill-router firecrawl mcp-help
```

## CLI Workflows

Search with result content:

```powershell
firecrawl search "model context protocol docs" --limit 5 --pretty
```

Scrape a page to clean Markdown:

```powershell
firecrawl scrape https://example.com --only-main-content
```

Scrape with structured JSON:

```powershell
firecrawl scrape https://example.com --format json --schema-file .\schema.json --pretty
```

Map a site:

```powershell
firecrawl map https://example.com --json --pretty
```

Crawl a bounded site section:

```powershell
firecrawl crawl https://example.com/docs --limit 25 --max-depth 2 --wait --pretty
```

Interact after a scrape:

```powershell
firecrawl scrape https://example.com
firecrawl interact "Click the pricing link and summarize the plans"
```

Run an agent job:

```powershell
firecrawl agent "Find the pricing plans for Notion" --pretty
```

Parse a local file through Firecrawl:

```powershell
firecrawl parse .\document.pdf --format markdown
```

## MCP Policy

Register `firecrawl-mcp` only when the target AI client needs live MCP tools.
The portable config shape is:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "firecrawl-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "from the user's local secret store"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Do not add this MCP server globally by default. Router-first clients should use
`skill-router firecrawl ...` and direct CLI calls.

## When To Use This Skill

Use this skill for:

- Firecrawl CLI install, update, status, login, or diagnosis,
- Firecrawl hosted search, scrape, crawl, map, parse, interact, or agent jobs,
- Firecrawl Python/Node/cURL/API examples,
- Firecrawl MCP server configuration,
- Firecrawl source checkout or upstream README interpretation.

Reject this skill for:

- local Crawl4AI workflows; use `crawl4ai`,
- generic web search/current-news tasks that can use the host search tool,
- ordinary browser automation better handled by Browser, Playwright, or Lightpanda,
- unrelated "fire" or "crawl" wording that is not Firecrawl.