xberg-io Mapping URLs
crawlberg map <url> discovers the URLs a site exposes without rendering or
extracting any page content. It reads sitemap.xml (including nested
sitemaps), then falls back to link extraction from the seed page. Use it to
plan a crawl, audit a site's surface, or feed a URL list into another tool.
Quick recipe
crawlberg map https://example.com --limit 500 --search docs --format markdown
Markdown output prints one URL per line — convenient to pipe into a file or a
follow-up crawl. JSON output (default) returns a structured MapResult.
Flag surface
| Flag | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
--limit |
— | Maximum number of URLs to return. Unbounded if unset. |
--search |
— | Case-insensitive substring filter on discovered URLs. |
--respect-robots-txt |
off | Honour robots.txt. Pass it for any third-party host. |
--format |
json |
json (full MapResult) or markdown (one URL per line). |
--timeout |
30000 |
Per-request timeout in ms. |
--browser-mode |
auto |
auto, always, never — see the headless-fallback skill. |
--browser-endpoint |
— | External CDP ws:// URL. |
--config |
— | Inline JSON or @file.json for the full CrawlConfig. |
map takes a single seed URL positionally. There is no --depth or
--max-pages here — those bound a crawl, not a map. Scope is the seed host's
sitemaps plus links found on the seed page; bound the result with --limit and
narrow it with --search.
How discovery works
- Fetch and parse
sitemap.xml, following nested<sitemapindex>entries. - If no sitemap (or a thin one), extract links from the seed page's HTML.
- Apply the
--searchsubstring filter (case-insensitive), then--limit.
No page bodies are rendered, so a map of hundreds of URLs returns in seconds —
far cheaper than crawling. In --browser-mode auto the seed fetch still falls
back to headless Chrome if the seed page is a JS shell that hides its links;
pass --browser-mode never to keep it static-only.
Output
Markdown mode
https://example.com/
https://example.com/docs/
https://example.com/docs/getting-started
https://example.com/blog/post-one
JSON mode
Top-level MapResult with a urls array; each entry carries the discovered
url. Read result.urls[i].url for each string when scripting.
crawlberg map https://example.com --format json | jq -r '.urls[].url'
Common patterns
Discover then crawl a subsection
crawlberg map https://example.com --search /docs/ --format markdown > urls.txt
Feed the filtered list into a bounded crawl, or scrape individual entries.
Audit a third-party site politely
crawlberg map https://unknown.example --respect-robots-txt --limit 200
When to reach for crawl instead
If the user needs the page content (Markdown, metadata, tables) rather than
just the URL list, use crawlberg crawl — see the crawling-a-site skill.
Reach for map first when the goal is enumeration, planning, or seeding.