Firecrawl CLI — lean reference

Check status: firecrawl --status (shows auth + credits + concurrency limit). Not installed? Run: npm install -g firecrawl-cli && firecrawl auth Auth commands: firecrawl login, firecrawl logout, firecrawl view-config

WebFetch vs Firecrawl

Try WebFetch first (free). Use Firecrawl when:

Need web search (WebFetch can't search)
JS-heavy SPA / marketing pages
Full article content (WebFetch truncates long pages)
WebFetch output < 1000 chars or looks incomplete

Escalation pattern

search → scrape → map+scrape → crawl* → interact*

* = advanced, install dedicated skill if needed

Commands

Search — no URL yet, find pages:

firecrawl search "query" --limit 5 -o .firecrawl/results.json --json
firecrawl search "query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/results.json --json        # include full content
firecrawl search "query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d --json                 # news, past day
firecrawl search "query" --country US --location "New York" --json         # geo-targeted

Scrape — have a URL:

firecrawl scrape "<url>" -o .firecrawl/page.md
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --only-main-content -o .firecrawl/page.md        # strip nav/footer
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --wait-for 3000 -o .firecrawl/page.md            # wait for JS
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --query "What is the enterprise price?"            # targeted Q (5 credits)
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --format markdown,html,screenshot -o .firecrawl/page.md  # multi-format
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --format json --schema '{"price":"string"}' -o .firecrawl/data.json  # structured

Map — find URLs within a site:

firecrawl map "<url>" --search "authentication" -o .firecrawl/urls.txt
firecrawl map "<url>" --limit 200 --json -o .firecrawl/urls.json
firecrawl map "<url>" --include-subdomains --sitemap -o .firecrawl/urls.json

Crawl — bulk extract site section (advanced — install firecrawl-crawl for full docs):

firecrawl crawl "<url>" --include-paths /docs --limit 50 --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl.json
firecrawl crawl "<url>" --max-depth 3 --delay 500 --exclude-paths /blog --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl.json

Download — save site as local files (advanced):

firecrawl download "<url>" --limit 20 -y -o .firecrawl/site/

Interact — click/fill forms after scrape (advanced — install firecrawl-instruct for full docs):

firecrawl scrape "<url>"
firecrawl interact --prompt "Click the login button"
firecrawl interact stop

Agent — AI-powered structured extraction (advanced — install firecrawl-agent for full docs):

firecrawl agent "extract all pricing tiers" --wait -o .firecrawl/data.json
firecrawl agent "extract pricing" --urls "<url>" --schema '{"tiers":[]}' --wait -o .firecrawl/data.json

Browser — CDP/Playwright-style automation (distinct from interact):

firecrawl browser launch-session "<url>"
firecrawl browser execute --code "document.querySelector('button').click()"
firecrawl browser list
firecrawl browser close <session-id>

Output rules

Always write to .firecrawl/ with -o to avoid context bloat
Add .firecrawl/ to .gitignore
Always quote URLs (? and & are shell special chars)
Never read entire output at once: head -50 file.md or grep "keyword" file.md
Naming: .firecrawl/search-{query}.json, .firecrawl/{site}-{path}.md

Extract URLs from JSON results

jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json

Credits

firecrawl credit-usage

firecrawl-lean