firecrawl-search

firecrawl search

Search naturally using the user’s actual question. Default search returns web results plus relevant Alexandria tools, with optional web content scraping.

For structured records, filterable listings, transcripts, or datasets, first check firecrawl search alexandria '<data you need>' for a suitable workflow or data provider. For a known website, use firecrawl find-tools <url>. Inspect a selected contract with firecrawl list <provider> <capability> --pretty before executing it through scrape. If no suitable tool exists, continue with web search or Agent. Use ordinary search for web research and URL scrape for a known page.

Quick start

# Basic search
firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/result.json --json

# Search and scrape full page content from results
firecrawl search "your query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/scraped.json --json

# News from the past day
firecrawl search "your query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/news.json --json

Use firecrawl search --help for search options, firecrawl list --help for contract browsing, and firecrawl scrape --help for execution options.

--categories developer searches an index of public repositories, GitHub issues, merged pull requests, repository READMEs, and curated documentation sites. --categories gov searches US federal, state, and local government legal and regulatory sources and cannot be combined with other categories. --categories research is a website filter, not the paper index. Dedicated skills: firecrawl-developer-index and firecrawl-research-index.

Government Index

For US legal or regulatory source discovery, use firecrawl gov "<question, jurisdiction, and date>" --limit 10. Use --limit for result count. search --categories gov also uses --limit and returns results in data.web; run other categories separately rather than combining them with gov.

Read a supplied source URL directly with scrape. Before citing current governing law, verify the source's issuer, jurisdiction, enacted/effective status, and version. Bill text, agency guidance, historical versions, and third-party reproductions need that verification too. Ask for a missing jurisdiction before selecting a rule; use general search for non-US questions or missing coverage. No hits does not prove that no applicable law exists.

Done when: relevant results have been inspected, per-call errors and empty results have been checked, the request has been answered with source links.

Go beyond page content with Alexandria

Alexandria is a catalogue of ready-made website workflows, API providers, and specialized indexes. Depending on the tool, it can return structured records, detailed listings, financial data, company information, research, or public records that a search snippet or single scraped page does not contain. Discover current coverage rather than assuming a provider or capability exists.

• Semantic discovery matches the meaning of the user's question to tool capabilities, even when no relevant provider website appears in the web results. Use firecrawl search alexandria '<data you need>' when you specifically need tools.
• Domain matching surfaces tools associated with websites in the web results. A matched tool may retrieve richer details, related records, or structured collections beyond the linked page. Domain matching signals relevance, not proof that the tool covers the requested fields or market.
• Combined search uses both paths alongside web results by default: firecrawl search '<user question>'. Use the web result when sufficient; inspect a matching tool when it offers a more direct route to the required data.

Inspect before execution

Search defaults to web,alexandria with domain-tool matching on. Preserve the user's location, marketplace, and constraints in the query; do not turn normal research into an artificial tool-discovery query. Inspect data.web and data.tools from the same response.

Search returns compact tool matches by default: only provider, capability, and description. A match is not executed data. Select a candidate, then run firecrawl list <provider> <capability> --pretty with its provider and capability IDs to read the contract's inputs, coverage, and access requirements.

Use --tool-detail summary --json for discovery metadata and navigation; inspect the selected contract with list before execution.

After inspecting the contract, execute with firecrawl scrape <provider/capability> --options '<input JSON>' (--alexandria remains supported). All provider execution goes through Scrape; search --scrape only fetches web result content, not provider tools.

Use list for category/provider browsing and selected contracts. For a known website, find-tools <url> discovers associated tools without executing them. Run firecrawl find-tools --help for advanced catalogue selectors; avoid broad expansion unless the task needs it.

If no returned tool covers the country/market/segment or required inputs, continue with ordinary web results. Do not exhaust the catalogue or pay for adjacent tools just to probe coverage. --sources web explicitly opts out of Alexandria; --sources web --domain-tools retains domain matches only.

Progressive discovery and output handling

# Web + domain matching + semantic tools
firecrawl search '<user question>'

# Semantic tools only
firecrawl search alexandria '<user question>'

# Categories → providers → tools → contract
firecrawl list
firecrawl list <category-id> --category
firecrawl list <provider-id>
firecrawl list <provider-id> <capability-id> --pretty

# Execute a tool
firecrawl scrape <provider-id>/<capability-id> --options '<JSON matching the selected contract>'

Default search combines web results, domain matches and semantic tools; search alexandria returns semantic tool matches only. Read the selected contract instead of expanding the entire catalogue. Tool discovery is not execution.

Keep large search responses in --json -o output and select the relevant results. Do not blindly rerun a successful provider because the client could not display its result.

Tips

• --highlights on by default: results are query-relevant excerpts from the page. Use --no-highlights for the original snippets.
• --scrape fetches full content — reuse that content instead of re-scraping result URLs. This saves credits and avoids redundant fetches.
• For large results, use -o and bounded local reads when a filesystem is available. Do not dump the full response into context.

See also

• firecrawl-scrape — scrape a specific URL
• firecrawl-map — discover URLs within a site
• firecrawl-crawl — bulk extract from a site
• firecrawl-developer-index — issues, merged PRs, READMEs, and docs
• firecrawl-research-index — published papers, not search --categories research