Firecrawl Toolkit

Turn web pages and PDFs into local, searchable Markdown for agents.

Firecrawl Toolkit is a CLI-first web capture tool built on top of the Firecrawl API. It is designed for shell-based agents such as Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, and other local automation workflows.

Instead of dumping long web pages into model context, the CLI saves the page as a local Markdown file and prints only a minimal success/failure signal to stdout.

firecrawl scrape --url "https://example.com/article" --output article --path ./Temp-Scrape
# true

Then let your agent inspect the file with normal local tools:

rg -n "pricing|risk|governance|download|PDF" ./Temp-Scrape
bat --paging=never --line-range 40:120 ./Temp-Scrape/article.md

Scrape once. Search locally. Keep context clean.

Why this toolkit exists

Most web-search or scrape tools treat the web page as immediate model input. That works for short pages, but it breaks down quickly with long reports, news articles, PDFs, documentation pages, and research material.

This toolkit uses a different workflow:

remote URL / PDF
→ local Markdown file
→ rg / bat / sed / awk / local file tools
→ agent reads only the relevant sections

This is especially useful when an agent needs to collect multiple sources, compare reports, inspect citations, or build a local research folder.

The goal is not to produce a perfectly clean article-only extraction. The goal is to produce complete, searchable, agent-readable local source material with reduced web noise and minimal context pollution.

Related MCP server: webmcp

Core workflow

1. Scrape a web page or PDF into local Markdown

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/report-or-article" \
  --output report \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

On success:

true

The file is saved as:

./Temp-Scrape/report.md

The generated Markdown begins with source metadata:

## title:
## description:
## url:
## language:
## creditsUsed:

markdown content

2. Search locally

rg -n "agentic|governance|pricing|risk|EBIT|download" ./Temp-Scrape

3. Read only the relevant section

bat --paging=never --line-range 80:150 ./Temp-Scrape/report.md

Or with standard Unix tools:

sed -n '80,150p' ./Temp-Scrape/report.md

Why stdout is intentionally small

For file-producing commands such as scrape, stdout is deliberately minimal.

On success:

true

On failure:

false
<short error reason>

Large page content is written to disk, not printed to stdout by default. This is intentional: agents should not accidentally ingest a 50k, 100k, or 500k character page into context.

The recommended pattern is:

scrape to file
→ inspect file size / headings / keywords
→ read only the useful ranges

Built-in boilerplate filtering

The scrape command applies a built-in noise filter by default.

It reduces common non-content regions such as:

• scripts, styles, forms, inputs, buttons

• nav bars, headers, footers, asides

• menus and navigation blocks

• logos and brand blocks

• accessibility skip links and visually hidden elements

• ads and advertisement containers

• sidebars

• breadcrumbs and pagination

• related, recommended, and trending sections

• common layout offset/module blocks

This is not meant to aggressively delete every non-article element. The priority is high recall with reduced noise: keep the source material useful for local search while removing obvious boilerplate.

Use --scroll when a page needs a short wait and body scroll before extraction, so lazy-loaded content has a chance to appear.

If a page contains useful content in an unusual region, you can disable the built-in filter:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/page" \
  --output page-raw \
  --empty-tags

You can also add your own exclusions:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/page" \
  --output page \
  --exclude-tags ".newsletter,.promo,aside.related"

Installation

Python package

The Python package provides the MCP server.

uvx firecrawl-toolkit

Package:

firecrawl-toolkit

Go CLI

The standalone CLI is located in the cli directory.

Build from source:

cd cli
go test ./...
go build -o firecrawl .

Run:

./firecrawl --help

Build Windows example:

cd cli
go build -o firecrawl.exe .

API key

The Go CLI reads the Firecrawl API key from:

FIRECRAWL_KEY

Linux/macOS:

export FIRECRAWL_KEY="fc-..."

Windows PowerShell:

$env:FIRECRAWL_KEY="fc-..."

The Python MCP server uses:

FIRECRAWL_API_KEY

API base URL

By default, both the Go CLI and the Python MCP server use the official Firecrawl API base URL:

https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2

For a self-hosted Firecrawl-compatible service, set:

FIRECRAWL_BASE_URL

Linux/macOS:

export FIRECRAWL_BASE_URL="https://your-firecrawl.example/v2"

Windows PowerShell:

$env:FIRECRAWL_BASE_URL="https://your-firecrawl.example/v2"

CLI commands

firecrawl aggregated
firecrawl web
firecrawl news
firecrawl image
firecrawl scholar
firecrawl scrape
firecrawl parse
firecrawl audio-scrape
firecrawl video-scrape
firecrawl credit-usage

Common CLI options

--proxy

Optional. Proxy URL for CLI requests to the Firecrawl API. Supported schemes are http, https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, and socks5h.

Use URL userinfo for proxy authentication, or omit it for no authentication:

firecrawl web --query "AI policy" --proxy "http://user:pass@127.0.0.1:8080"
firecrawl scrape --url "https://example.com" --output example --proxy "socks5://127.0.0.1:1080"

Scrape command

Basic usage

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/article" \
  --output article

This writes:

article.md

Save into a directory

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/article" \
  --output article \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

This writes:

./Temp-Scrape/article.md

If the directory does not exist, the CLI tries to create it.

Scrape a PDF

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com/report.pdf" \
  --output report-pdf \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

The CLI requests Markdown output and enables Firecrawl’s PDF parser.

Scrape options

--output

Required. Export name.

firecrawl scrape --url "https://example.com" --output example

The CLI writes:

example.md

If the provided name already ends with .md, it is preserved.

--path

Optional. Output directory.

firecrawl scrape --url "https://example.com" --output example --path ./exports

--url

Required. Target web page or PDF URL.

firecrawl scrape --url "https://example.com" --output example

--include-tags

Optional. CSS selectors to include.

Use this when you know the useful content is inside a specific region:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --include-tags "article"

Multiple selectors:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --include-tags ".article-body,#content,main"

JSON array form is recommended when selectors contain spaces, quotes, or commas:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --include-tags '["main article",".post-content","#content"]'

--exclude-tags

Optional. Additional CSS selectors to exclude.

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --exclude-tags ".nav,.footer,#sidebar"

This is merged with the built-in boilerplate filter.

--empty-tags

Optional. Disable the built-in exclude selector list for this request.

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page-raw \
  --empty-tags

User-provided --exclude-tags are still applied:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page-custom \
  --empty-tags \
  --exclude-tags ".nav"

--scroll

Optional. Enable wait and scroll actions before scraping.

When enabled, scrape sends these actions in the request payload:

[
  {
    "type": "wait",
    "milliseconds": 2
  },
  {
    "type": "scroll",
    "direction": "down",
    "selector": "body"
  }
]

Use --scroll when a page needs the extra interaction:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --scroll

--skip-tls

Optional. Skip TLS certificate verification for the upstream scrape target.

By default, TLS certificate verification is enabled.

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --skip-tls

--headers

Optional. JSON object of request headers.

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --headers '{"X-Trace-Id":"abc123"}'

--headers-file

Optional. Path to a headers file. The file is auto-detected as one of these standard formats:

• JSON headers or cookies, including a plain object, headers/cookies arrays, or browser extension cookie export arrays

• HTTP header string, for example browser-style Name: value lines

• Netscape cookie file

• Cookie header value, for example a=1; b=2

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --headers-file ./headers.txt

Use sensitive headers carefully. Avoid passing credentials, cookies, or authorization tokens unless you understand the risk.

--timeout

Optional. Request timeout in seconds. Default is 120.

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --output page \
  --timeout 180

--proxy

Optional. Proxy URL for requests from the CLI to the Firecrawl API. Supports http, https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, and socks5h, with URL userinfo authentication or no authentication.

Scholar command

scholar searches research papers and prints compact single-line JSON to stdout.

firecrawl scholar \
  --query "AI" \
  --search-num 3 \
  --categories "cs.CY" \
  --time-from "2000-05-28" \
  --time-to "2026-06-28"

The command sends a GET request to /v2/search/research/papers with query string parameters and a JSON body containing timeout.

Scholar options

--query

Required. Research paper search keywords. Minimum length is 1.

--search-num

Optional. Number of papers to return. Legal range is 1 to 500. Default is 5.

--categories

Optional. Comma-separated paper category filters. All filters must match.

--time-from

Optional. Inclusive lower bound for created/updated date. Format: yyyy-MM-dd, for example 2000-05-28.

--time-to

Optional. Inclusive upper bound for created/updated date. Format: yyyy-MM-dd, for example 2026-06-28.

--timeout

Optional. Request timeout in seconds. Default is 120.

--proxy

Optional. Proxy URL for requests from the CLI to the Firecrawl API. Supports http, https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, and socks5h.

Output fields:

{"data":{"scholar":[{"abstract":"Paper abstract","paperId":"2581735124241874","primaryId":"arxiv:2307.10057","score":0.956892745058914,"title":"Paper title"}]},"success":true}

Parse command

Use parse for documents from a URL or local file. The command writes Markdown to a local .md file and prints only true or false to stdout.

Parse a document URL

firecrawl parse \
  --url "https://example.com/report.xlsx" \
  --output report \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

URL mode sends the document URL through the scrape endpoint with Markdown output, PDF parser support, base64 images preserved, and the configured timeout.

Parse a local file

firecrawl parse \
  --file ./report.xlsx \
  --output report \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

File mode uploads the local file to the parse endpoint with multipart form data.

Supported local file extensions:

.html .htm .pdf .docx .doc .odt .rtf .xlsx .xls

Parse options

--url

Target document URL. Required unless --file is provided. --url and --file are mutually exclusive.

firecrawl parse --url "https://example.com/report.pdf" --output report

--file

Local document file. Required unless --url is provided.

firecrawl parse --file ./report.pdf --output report

--output

Required. Export name. The result is saved as <output>.md.

--path

Optional. Output directory. Defaults to the current directory.

--skip-tls

Optional. URL mode only. Skip TLS certificate verification for the upstream document URL. Default is false.

--timeout

Optional. Request timeout in seconds. Default is 120.

--proxy

Optional. Proxy URL for requests from the CLI to the Firecrawl API. Supports http, https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, and socks5h.

The generated Markdown begins with:

## title:
## url:
## language:
## creditsUsed:

markdown content

Audio and video scrape commands

audio-scrape and video-scrape request Firecrawl AV extraction and print compact single-line JSON to stdout.

Audio scrape

firecrawl audio-scrape \
  --url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" \
  --timeout 60

Output fields:

{"creditsUsed":5,"title":"Video title","description":"Video description","audio":"https://storage.example/audio.mp3","success":true}

Video scrape

firecrawl video-scrape \
  --url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" \
  --timeout 60

Output fields:

{"creditsUsed":5,"title":"Video title","description":"Video description","video":"https://storage.example/video.mp4","success":true}

Both commands require --url. --timeout is optional, accepts seconds, defaults to 120, and is forwarded to Firecrawl as milliseconds. --proxy is also supported for CLI requests to the Firecrawl API.

Recommended agent usage

Give your agent a narrow workflow instead of exposing every scrape option.

Default capture

firecrawl scrape --url "$URL" --output "$NAME" --path ./Temp-Scrape

Inspect the captured source

rg -n "$KEYWORDS" ./Temp-Scrape
bat --paging=never --line-range 1:120 "./Temp-Scrape/$NAME.md"

If the page is noisy

Try adding exclusions:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "$URL" \
  --output "$NAME-clean" \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape \
  --exclude-tags ".newsletter,.promo,aside.related"

If the built-in filter removes something useful

Capture a raw version:

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "$URL" \
  --output "$NAME-raw" \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape \
  --empty-tags

Search commands

Search commands return compact single-line JSON.

firecrawl aggregated --query "AI governance 2026" --country US --search-num 10
firecrawl web        --query "AI governance 2026" --country US --search-num 10
firecrawl news       --query "OpenAI news" --search-time week
firecrawl image      --query "firecrawl logo" --search-num 10

Available search commands:

aggregated  web + news + images
web         web results
news        news results
image       image results

Search options

--query

Required. Search keywords.

firecrawl web --query "AI pricing SaaS"

--country

Optional. Country or region name / ISO code. Default is US.

firecrawl web --query "AI policy" --country "United States"
firecrawl web --query "AI policy" --country US

--search-num

Optional. Number of results, from 1 to 100. Default is 20.

firecrawl web --query "AI policy" --search-num 5

--search-time

Optional. Time filter.

Allowed values:

hour
day
week
month
year

Example:

firecrawl news --query "AI regulation" --search-time week

--timeout

Optional. Request timeout in seconds. Default is 120.

--proxy

Optional. Proxy URL for requests from the CLI to the Firecrawl API. Supports http, https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, and socks5h.

Search output

Search commands output compact JSON:

{"success":true,"data":{"web":[],"news":[],"images":[]},"creditsUsed":1}

Mapped fields:

data.web[]:
  title
  description
  url

data.news[]:
  title
  snippet
  url
  date

data.images[]:
  title
  imageUrl
  url

Search results are intended to help agents discover URLs. For detailed reading, scrape selected URLs into local Markdown files.

Recommended pattern:

firecrawl web --query "AI trust maturity survey 2026" --search-num 5
firecrawl scrape --url "<selected-url>" --output ai-trust-survey --path ./Temp-Scrape
rg -n "governance|risk|agentic|maturity" ./Temp-Scrape

Credit usage

Check Firecrawl team credit usage:

firecrawl credit-usage

Pretty-print:

firecrawl credit-usage --pretty

credit-usage also supports --proxy for CLI requests to the Firecrawl API.

Default output is JSON:

{"success":true,"data":{"remainingCredits":1000,"planCredits":500000,"billingPeriodStart":"2025-01-01T00:00:00Z","billingPeriodEnd":"2025-01-31T23:59:59Z"}}

Exit behavior

Scrape and parse

Success:

true

Failure:

false
<error reason>

The CLI writes the Markdown file only after a successful scrape or parse. Existing files are not created or overwritten on failure.

Search, scholar, credit usage, audio scrape, and video scrape

Search, scholar, credit usage, audio-scrape, and video-scrape commands output JSON.

Example: local research folder

mkdir -p ./Temp-Scrape

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/tech-forward/state-of-ai-trust-in-2026-shifting-to-the-agentic-era" \
  --output mckinsey-ai-trust-2026 \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

firecrawl scrape \
  --url "https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/ai-will-lead-labour-shortages-jeff-bezos-says-vivatech-2026-06-17/" \
  --output reuters-bezos-ai-labor \
  --path ./Temp-Scrape

rg -n "agentic|governance|risk|labor shortage|AI" ./Temp-Scrape
bat --paging=never --line-range 1:120 ./Temp-Scrape/mckinsey-ai-trust-2026.md

This creates a local source folder that can be searched and revisited without repeatedly fetching or pasting web pages into context.

Python MCP server

The project also includes a Python MCP server.

Run with:

uvx firecrawl-toolkit

Example MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "firecrawl": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["firecrawl-toolkit"],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "<Your Firecrawl API key>",
        "FIRECRAWL_MCP_ENABLE_STDIO": "1"
      }
    }
  }
}

MCP environment variables:

STDIO, HTTP, and SSE should be used one at a time. Start separate services with different lock files if multiple transports are needed.

MCP tools

The MCP server provides:

For local shell-based agents, the Go CLI is usually the simpler and safer interface because it writes large scrape results to files instead of returning them directly to model context.

Development

Run Go CLI tests:

cd cli
go test ./...

Build the CLI:

cd cli
go build -o firecrawl .

Run Python tests:

pytest

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.