MCP Firecrawl

Firecrawl MCP

Overview

This skill enables web scraping and content extraction using Firecrawl through MCP. Firecrawl provides powerful capabilities for scraping single pages, crawling entire websites, searching with content extraction, and extracting structured data.

When to Use This Skill

• Scraping content from single web pages
• Crawling multiple pages on a website
• Searching the web with automatic content extraction
• Discovering all URLs on a website
• Extracting structured data (prices, names, details)

Tool Selection Guide

Core Tools

firecrawl_scrape

Scrape content from a single URL. Most powerful and reliable scraper.

Tool: mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_scrape

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_scrape({
  url: "https://docs.example.com/api",
  formats: ["markdown"],
  onlyMainContent: true,
  maxAge: 172800000
})

Key Parameters:

• url: Target URL
• formats: Output formats - "markdown", "html", "links"
• onlyMainContent: Extract only main content (recommended)
• maxAge: Cache TTL in ms (500% faster with cache)

firecrawl_search

Search the web and optionally scrape results.

Tool: mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_search

Without scraping (preferred):

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_search({
  query: "xterm.js terminal tutorial",
  limit: 5
})

With scraping:

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_search({
  query: "VS Code extension API",
  limit: 3,
  scrapeOptions: {
    formats: ["markdown"],
    onlyMainContent: true
  }
})

Search Operators:

firecrawl_map

Discover all URLs on a website.

Tool: mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_map

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_map({
  url: "https://docs.example.com",
  limit: 100,
  search: "api"
})

firecrawl_extract

Extract structured data using LLM.

Tool: mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_extract

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_extract({
  urls: ["https://shop.example.com/product/123"],
  prompt: "Extract product details",
  schema: {
    type: "object",
    properties: {
      name: { type: "string" },
      price: { type: "number" }
    },
    required: ["name", "price"]
  }
})

firecrawl_crawl

Crawl multiple pages (use sparingly).

Tool: mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_crawl

mcp__firecrawl__firecrawl_crawl({
  url: "https://docs.example.com/guide",
  maxDiscoveryDepth: 2,
  limit: 10
})

Warning: Crawl can return large responses. Keep limits low.

Best Practices

1. Prefer scrape over crawl: Use map + scrape for better control
2. Use caching: Add maxAge for repeated requests
3. Search then scrape: Search without formats, then scrape relevant URLs
4. Limit crawl depth: Keep maxDiscoveryDepth and limit low
5. Use onlyMainContent: Get cleaner content without navigation

References

For complete tool parameters, see references/tools.md.