crawl-site

Crawl a website using Crawlio. Configures settings based on site type, starts the crawl, monitors progress, and reports results.

When to Use

Use this skill when the user wants to download, mirror, or crawl a website for offline access, analysis, or archival.

Workflow

1. Determine Site Type

Before configuring settings, identify the site type. Ask the user or infer from context:

Site Type	Indicators	Recommended Settings
Static site	HTML/CSS, no JS frameworks	maxDepth: 5, maxConcurrent: 8
SPA (React, Vue, etc.)	JS-heavy, client-side routing	maxDepth: 3, includeSupportingFiles: true, consider using crawlio-agent for enrichment first
CMS (WordPress, etc.)	/wp-content/, admin paths	maxDepth: 5, excludePatterns: ["/wp-admin/*", "/wp-json/*"]
Documentation site	/docs/, versioned paths	maxDepth: 10, excludePatterns: ["/v[0-9]*/*"] for old versions
Single page snapshot	User wants just one page	maxDepth: 0, includeSupportingFiles: true

2. Configure Settings

Use update_settings to set appropriate configuration:

update_settings({
  settings: {
    maxConcurrent: 4,      // Parallel downloads (increase for large sites)
    crawlDelay: 0.5,       // Be polite — seconds between requests
    timeout: 60,           // Request timeout
    stripTrackingParams: true
  },
  policy: {
    scopeMode: "sameDomain",
    maxDepth: 5,
    respectRobotsTxt: true,
    includeSupportingFiles: true,
    downloadCrossDomainAssets: true,  // Get CDN assets
    autoUpgradeHTTP: true             // Use HTTPS
  }
})

3. Start the Crawl

start_crawl({ url: "https://example.com" })

For multi-page targeted downloads:

start_crawl({ urls: ["https://example.com/page1", "https://example.com/page2"] })

4. Monitor Progress

Poll get_crawl_status with the sequence number for efficient change detection:

get_crawl_status()
// Returns: seq: 42, downloaded: 85/150

get_crawl_status({ since: 42 })
// Returns: "No changes" or updated status

5. Check for Issues

After crawl completes:

get_failed_urls()     // Any failures to retry?
get_errors()          // Any engine errors?
get_site_tree()       // What was downloaded?

6. Retry Failures (if any)

recrawl_urls({ urls: ["https://example.com/failed-page"] })

7. Report Results

Summarize: pages downloaded, failures, site structure, any notable findings.

Tips

• For large sites (1000+ pages), set maxPagesPerCrawl to avoid runaway crawls
• Use excludePatterns to skip known junk paths (admin panels, API routes, search results)
• If a site requires authentication, set customCookies or customHeaders in settings
• For SPA sites, combine with the crawlio-agent Chrome extension for framework detection and JavaScript-rendered content