cli

Discover and list a site's URLs, with search filtering. Use for "map the site" or "find the URL for" requests — when the user knows the site but not the exact page, or wants site structure.

Alert by webhook/email on web changes — use for "monitor/watch/track/alert me when": recurring checks on known URLs (prefer over repeated one-off scrapes) or web-wide watches for new results (queries + goal).

Convert a local file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, …) to markdown, or answer questions about its content. Use whenever the input is a file path, not a URL.

Find the papers that answer a research query in Firecrawl's research paper index — a corpus of paper abstracts whose largest share is biomedical and life-science literature (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv), alongside arXiv preprints in CS, physics, and math — using semantic search, semantic and structural expansion, and in-body verification. Use this skill for literature-finding and paper-retrieval tasks of any kind, including clinical, biomedical, drug, gene, disease, and other life-science questions, whether the answer is a single paper or a full multi-paper set. The index is reached only through the `firecrawl_research_*` MCP tools or the `firecrawl research` CLI subcommands. Calling `firecrawl_search` with its `categories` option set to `["research"]` is a different feature — it filters ordinary web search to research-affiliated websites (the list includes PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and publisher sites) and returns page results from them, without querying the paper records in this index.

Any live-web task via the Firecrawl CLI — including ordinary web research: searching the web, reading or extracting pages, gathering sources, discovering site URLs, bulk extraction, downloading a site, change alerts, or pages needing clicks/login — web only; local files route to firecrawl-parse. For papers use firecrawl-research-index; for library, API, error, or bug questions use firecrawl-developer-index.

Autonomously navigate websites and extract structured data across pages. Use when the task requires navigation or no suitable ready-made workflow or data provider covers it.

Find a direct path to structured data through ready-made workflows, data APIs, and indexes. Follow the search skill to discover and inspect tools, then the scrape skill to execute them.

Bulk-extract many pages from one site or section. Use for "crawl", "everything under /docs", or content spanning linked pages.

Search an index of public repositories, GitHub issues, merged pull requests, repository READMEs, and curated documentation sites. Use when a programming question needs external documentation or upstream evidence.

Save a site or section as local files (markdown, screenshots). Use for "download the site", offline docs, or a local copy for reference.

Drive a live browser on a scraped page: click, fill forms, log in, paginate, infinite-scroll. Use when content requires interaction or a scrape failed or returned incomplete content.

Read a known webpage or execute a discovered workflow or data-provider capability. Use for page content or structured results once the URL or tool is selected.

Find web sources with query-relevant page excerpts and optional full-page content, and discover workflows, data APIs, and indexes. Use for web research or finding structured records, listings, transcripts, and datasets. Supports semantic tool discovery, domain matching, and progressive catalogue browsing.