Firecrawl CLI

Use the firecrawl CLI for web scraping, search, and browser automation. It returns clean markdown optimized for LLM context windows and handles JavaScript rendering.

Prerequisites

The firecrawl-cli package must already be installed and authenticated. Check status:

firecrawl --status

Expected output when ready:

  🔥 firecrawl cli v1.4.1

  ● Authenticated via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
  Concurrency: 0/100 jobs (parallel scrape limit)
  Credits: 500,000 remaining

• Concurrency: Max parallel jobs. Stay within this limit.
• Credits: Remaining API credits. Each operation consumes credits.

If not installed or not authenticated, refer to rules/install.md.

Organization

Create a .firecrawl/ folder in the working directory to store results. Add .firecrawl/ to .gitignore. Use -o to write output to files (avoids flooding context):

firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/search-{query}.json
firecrawl scrape https://example.com -o .firecrawl/{site}-{path}.md

Always quote URLs in shell commands.

Commands

Search

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

# Limit results
firecrawl search "AI news" --limit 10 -o .firecrawl/search-ai-news.json --json

# Search specific sources
firecrawl search "tech startups" --sources news -o .firecrawl/search-news.json --json
firecrawl search "landscapes" --sources images -o .firecrawl/search-images.json --json

# Time-based search
firecrawl search "AI announcements" --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/search-today.json --json  # Past day
firecrawl search "tech news" --tbs qdr:w -o .firecrawl/search-week.json --json          # Past week

# Search AND scrape content from results
firecrawl search "API docs" --scrape -o .firecrawl/search-docs.json --json

Options: --limit <n>, --sources <web,images,news>, --categories <github,research,pdf>, --tbs <qdr:h|d|w|m|y>, --location, --country <code>, --scrape, -o <path>

Scrape

# Markdown output
firecrawl scrape https://example.com -o .firecrawl/example.md

# Main content only (removes nav, footer, ads)
firecrawl scrape https://example.com --only-main-content -o .firecrawl/example.md

# Multiple formats (JSON output)
firecrawl scrape https://example.com --format markdown,links -o .firecrawl/example.json

# Wait for JS to render
firecrawl scrape https://spa-app.com --wait-for 3000 -o .firecrawl/spa.md

# Include/exclude specific HTML tags
firecrawl scrape https://example.com --include-tags article,main -o .firecrawl/article.md

Options: -f <markdown,html,rawHtml,links,screenshot,json>, --only-main-content, --wait-for <ms>, --include-tags, --exclude-tags, -o <path>

Map

Discover all URLs on a site:

firecrawl map https://example.com -o .firecrawl/urls.txt
firecrawl map https://example.com --search "blog" -o .firecrawl/blog-urls.txt
firecrawl map https://example.com --limit 500 --json -o .firecrawl/urls.json

Options: --limit <n>, --search <query>, --include-subdomains, --json, -o <path>

Browser

Launch cloud Chromium sessions for interactive browsing. Sessions auto-launch on first use:

firecrawl browser "open https://example.com"
firecrawl browser "snapshot"
firecrawl browser "click @e5"
firecrawl browser "fill @e3 'search query'"
firecrawl browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/browser-scrape.md
firecrawl browser close

Core commands: open <url>, snapshot, screenshot, click <@ref>, type <@ref> <text>, fill <@ref> <text>, scrape, scroll <direction>, wait <seconds>

Session management:

firecrawl browser launch-session --ttl 600
firecrawl browser list
firecrawl browser close

Options: --ttl <seconds>, --ttl-inactivity <seconds>, --stream, --session <id>, -o <path>

Crawl

# Start and wait for completion
firecrawl crawl https://example.com --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl-result.json

# Limit scope
firecrawl crawl https://example.com --limit 100 --max-depth 3 --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl-result.json

# Crawl specific sections
firecrawl crawl https://example.com --include-paths /blog,/docs --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl-result.json

Options: --wait, --progress, --limit <n>, --max-depth <n>, --include-paths, --exclude-paths, --delay <ms>, --max-concurrency <n>, -o <path>

Agent

AI-powered autonomous web data extraction (takes 2-5 minutes):

firecrawl agent "Find the pricing plans for Firecrawl" --wait -o .firecrawl/agent-pricing.json
firecrawl agent "Extract product data" --urls https://example.com --wait -o .firecrawl/agent-products.json
firecrawl agent "Extract company info" --schema '{"type":"object","properties":{"name":{"type":"string"}}}' --wait -o .firecrawl/agent-info.json

Options: --urls <urls>, --model <spark-1-mini|spark-1-pro>, --schema <json>, --schema-file <path>, --max-credits <n>, --wait, -o <path>

Reading Output Files

Firecrawl output files can be large. Use incremental reads:

wc -l .firecrawl/file.md && head -50 .firecrawl/file.md
grep -n "keyword" .firecrawl/file.md

Parallelization

Run multiple scrapes in parallel when possible:

firecrawl scrape https://site1.com -o .firecrawl/1.md &
firecrawl scrape https://site2.com -o .firecrawl/2.md &
firecrawl scrape https://site3.com -o .firecrawl/3.md &
wait

Check firecrawl --status for your concurrency limit before parallelizing.