Firecrawl Build Search#

Use this when the application starts with a query, not a URL.

Use This When#

• the user asks a question and the product must discover sources first
• the feature needs current web results
• you want to turn a search query into a shortlist of pages for later scraping

Default Recommendations#

• Use /search first when URL discovery is part of the product behavior.
• Keep search and extraction conceptually separate unless scraping search results is clearly required.
• Prefer selective follow-up extraction over broad hydration when cost or latency matters.

Common Product Patterns#

• answer generation with cited sources
• company, competitor, or topic discovery
• research workflows that produce a shortlist before deeper extraction
• query-to-URL pipelines for later /scrape or /interact

Escalation Rules#

• If you already have the URL, use firecrawl-build-scrape.
• If the result page then requires clicks or form interaction, escalate to firecrawl-build-interact.

Implementation Notes#

• Treat /search as discovery, ranking, and source selection.
• Be explicit about whether the product needs snippets, URLs, or full result content.
• Keep the query contract stable so downstream scraping logic stays predictable.

Docs (Source of Truth)#

Read the source-of-truth page for your project language before writing integration code:

• Node / TypeScript: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/node
• Python: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python
• Rust: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust
• Java: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java
• Elixir: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir
• cURL / REST: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/curl

See Also#

• firecrawl-build
• firecrawl-build-scrape
• firecrawl-build-interact