cf-crawl

Crawl websites using Cloudflare Browser Rendering /crawl API. Async multi-page crawl with markdown/HTML/JSON output, link following, pattern filtering, and AI-powered structured data extraction. Use when crawling entire sites or multiple pages, building knowledge bases, extracting structured data from websites, or when web_fetch is insufficient (JS rendering, multi-page, authenticated crawls).

Cloudflare /crawl

Async site crawler via CF Browser Rendering API. Start a job → poll for results → get markdown/HTML/JSON per page.

Quick Start

bash

# Crawl a site (5 pages, markdown, no JS rendering = fast + free)
bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://example.com" --limit 5 --format markdown

# With JS rendering (for SPAs, dynamic content)
bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://example.com" --render --limit 10

# Start only (get job ID, poll later)
bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://example.com" --limit 100 --start-only

# Poll existing job
bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/poll.sh <job-id>

Credentials

Stored at ~/.clawdbot/secrets/cloudflare-crawl.env:

text

CF_ACCOUNT_ID=<account_id>
CF_CRAWL_API_TOKEN=<token_with_read_and_edit>

Key Options

Option	Description
--limit N	Max pages (default 10)
--depth N	Max link depth (default 10)
--format markdown|html|json	Output format (default markdown)
--render	Enable headless browser (default: off = fast fetch, free during beta)
--include PAT	Wildcard URL pattern to include (repeatable)
--exclude PAT	Wildcard URL pattern to exclude (repeatable)
--external	Follow external domain links
--subdomains	Follow subdomain links
--source all|sitemaps|links	URL discovery method
--json-prompt "..."	AI extraction prompt (with --format json)
--json-schema file.json	JSON schema for structured extraction
--timeout SEC	Max poll wait (default 300s)
--output FILE	Write full results to file
--raw	Output raw API response
--start-only	Print job ID without polling

Common Patterns

Crawl docs site for knowledge base

bash

bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://docs.example.com/" \
  --limit 50 --depth 3 --format markdown --output docs.json

Crawl with URL filtering

bash

bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://example.com/" \
  --include "/docs/**" --exclude "/docs/archive/**" --limit 20

AI-powered structured extraction

bash

bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://example.com/products" \
  --format json --render \
  --json-prompt "Extract product name, price, and description" \
  --json-schema schema.json

Long-running crawl (background)

bash

JOB_ID=$(bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/crawl.sh "https://big-site.com" \
  --limit 1000 --start-only)
# Check later:
bash ~/clawd/skills/cf-crawl/scripts/poll.sh "$JOB_ID"

Cost Notes

• render: false (default) — fast HTML fetch, free during beta
• render: true — uses Browser Rendering minutes (paid)
• format json — uses Workers AI tokens for extraction (paid)
• Results cached in R2 with --max-age (default 24hr)

API Details

See references/api-reference.md for full parameter documentation, response schema, and lifecycle details.