Install
Use with your agent
Install the firecrawl-search skill, then use it as build context. Run: npx skills add https://github.com/firecrawl/cli --skill firecrawl-search. Then read the installed skill.md and follow its guidance to build or refactor my project.
firecrawl search
Web search with optional content scraping. Returns search results as JSON, optionally with full page content.
When to use
- You don't have a specific URL yet
- You need to find pages, answer questions, or discover sources
- First step in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → interact
Quick start
# Basic search
firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/result.json --json
# Search and scrape full page content from results
firecrawl search "your query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/scraped.json --json
# News from the past day
firecrawl search "your query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/news.json --json
Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
--limit <n> | Max number of results |
--sources <web,images,news> | Source types to search |
--categories <github,research,pdf> | Filter by category |
--tbs <qdr:h|d|w|m|y> | Time-based search filter |
--location | Location for search results |
--country <code> | Country code for search |
--scrape | Also scrape full page content for each result |
--scrape-formats | Formats when scraping (default: markdown) |
-o, --output <path> | Output file path |
--json | Output as JSON |
Tips
--scrapefetches full content — don't re-scrape URLs from search results. This saves credits and avoids redundant fetches.- Always write results to
.firecrawl/with-oto avoid context window bloat. - Use
jqto extract URLs or titles:jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json - Naming convention:
.firecrawl/search-{query}.jsonor.firecrawl/search-{query}-scraped.json
See also
- firecrawl-scrape — scrape a specific URL
- firecrawl-map — discover URLs within a site
- firecrawl-crawl — bulk extract from a site