Firecrawl

Firecrawl turns the live web into agent-ready markdown over a plain REST API (https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2, Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY). Two calls cover most web work: /search to discover pages by query, /scrape to extract clean content from a URL you already have. Use it whenever a task needs current web information or the content of a specific page.

Before you start

If the user's message only invokes this skill (e.g. "use firecrawl skill") without a concrete task, ask what they want to search or scrape. When the task is concrete, check the credential first:

bash
[ -n "$FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" ] && echo ok || echo missing

If missing (also visible in your Vault Keys section), ask the user to add FIRECRAWL_API_KEY to this agent's key vault — gear icon on the agent card → settings → key vault tab; keys come from the Firecrawl dashboard (https://www.firecrawl.dev/signin). Vault values reach your shell environment on the next task. Only fall back to the keyless tier (below) when the user cannot provide a key right now.

Search

bash
curl -sS -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "<what you are looking for>", "limit": 5}' \
  | jq '[.data.web[] | {url, title, description}]'

• Results live in .data.web[], each with url / title / description; limit defaults to 10 (per source).
• Adding "scrapeOptions": {"formats": ["markdown"]} returns each result's page content inline — prefer the two-step search → scrape flow instead when only a hit or two matters; content-included search costs far more credits and context.
• Useful filters: "sources": [{"type": "news"}] (or images), "includeDomains": ["docs.example.com"], "categories": ["github"] (or research / pdf), "tbs" for time-bounded queries.

Scrape

bash
curl -sS -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "<page url>"}' \
  | jq -r '.data.markdown' > <topic>.md

• Markdown is the default format; the page's main content only (onlyMainContent defaults to true). Metadata sits in .data.metadata (title, sourceURL, statusCode).
• Public document URLs (PDF, DOCX, …) scrape to markdown the same way.
• JS-heavy pages that come back empty: retry with "waitFor": 2000.

Workflow and context economy

Search first for discovery, scrape once you have the URL. Never dump full page markdown into your context or reply: pipe it to a file (as above) and read the relevant parts with shell (grep/sed), then cite metadata.sourceURL for every claim you take from a page.

No key available

The keyless free tier only works through official Firecrawl clients and is rate-limited:

bash
npx -y firecrawl-cli@latest search "<query>"
npx -y firecrawl-cli@latest scrape <url> -o page.md

Use it as a stopgap and tell the user to add a real key to the vault — accounts unlock the full API and higher limits.

Errors

• 401 — missing/invalid key: re-check the vault entry name FIRECRAWL_API_KEY.
• 402 / 429 — out of credits or rate-limited: report to the user; do not retry-loop.
• Anything else: https://docs.firecrawl.dev is the source of truth for request/response schemas.