Firecrawl Local

Use this skill whenever you need to scrape web pages, crawl websites, or map site structure using a self-hosted Firecrawl instance. Triggers on requests to extract web content, build RAG pipelines from docs, bulk ingest documentation, discover site URLs, or get clean markdown from any webpage. Assumes Firecrawl is already running at localhost:3002 (no Docker startup). Falls back gracefully if unavailable. Use even if the user just says "scrape this", "crawl the docs", or "get content from X".

Firecrawl Local Skill

Self-hosted Firecrawl integration using the v1 REST API. Tests connectivity first, executes scrape/crawl/map, handles async crawl polling automatically.

Setup (one-time)

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/skills/firecrawl-local
cp run.sh ~/.openclaw/skills/firecrawl-local/run.sh
chmod +x ~/.openclaw/skills/firecrawl-local/run.sh

The script lives at scripts/run.sh in this skill folder — copy it into place as above.

Prerequisites: curl, jq installed. Firecrawl running at localhost:3002.

Optional env vars:

export FIRECRAWL_LOCAL_URL="http://localhost:3002"  # default
export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY="fc-your-key"              # only needed if auth enabled

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Commands

Default — scrape a single page (URL only, no subcommand needed)

firecrawl-local https://docs.example.com/api

Scrape — explicit, with format options

firecrawl-local scrape https://docs.example.com/api
firecrawl-local scrape https://docs.example.com/api --formats markdown,html

Map — discover all URLs on a site

firecrawl-local map https://docs.example.com
firecrawl-local map https://docs.example.com --limit 200

Crawl — bulk extract multiple pages (async, auto-polled)

firecrawl-local crawl https://docs.example.com
firecrawl-local crawl https://docs.example.com --limit 30 --max-depth 2
firecrawl-local crawl https://docs.example.com --include /docs --exclude /blog

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Agent Instructions

When to use each command

Goal	Command
Get content from one URL (quickest)	firecrawl-local <url>
Discover what pages exist	map
Get content from one URL with format control	scrape
Ingest an entire docs site	crawl
RAG pipeline ingestion	map → targeted scrape or crawl

Optimal workflows

Documentation RAG pipeline:

1. map https://docs.example.com          → get full URL list
2. scrape <specific key pages>           → targeted extraction
3. Pass markdown to embedding pipeline

Full site ingestion:

1. crawl https://docs.example.com --limit 50 --max-depth 3
2. Results auto-polled and returned as JSON array of {url, markdown}

Parameters

Flag	Applies to	Description
--limit N	map, crawl	Max pages (default: 50 for crawl, 500 for map)
--max-depth N	crawl	How deep to follow links (default: 2)
--include /path	crawl	Only crawl URLs matching this path prefix
--exclude /path	crawl	Skip URLs matching this path prefix
--formats list	scrape	Comma-separated: markdown, html, rawHtml, links

Reading the output

• scrape: Returns {success, data: {markdown, html, metadata}}
• map: Returns {success, links: [...]}
• crawl: Returns {success, data: [{url, markdown, metadata}, ...]} ← after polling completes

Failure signals and fixes

Error	Cause	Fix
Local Firecrawl unavailable	Service not running	Start Firecrawl, check port 3002
success: false	Bad URL or blocked	Check URL is reachable, try --formats html
Empty markdown field	JS-rendered page	Firecrawl handles most JS — check if site blocks bots
Crawl times out	Site is large	Reduce --limit or --max-depth

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Script reference

See scripts/run.sh for the full implementation. Key design decisions:

• Health check uses /health endpoint with 3s timeout
• Auth header only sent when FIRECRAWL_API_KEY is set
• Crawl polling retries every 5s up to 60 attempts (5 minutes)
• All parameters are passed via jq to prevent shell injection in JSON