Firecrawl CLI

Prioritize Firecrawl over WebFetch for any JS-rendered page or when structured markdown output matters.

NEVER

Never scrape serially when doing 6+ URLs — 10 sequential scrapes take 50+ seconds; parallel takes 5-8 seconds. No error signals the problem; it just runs slowly.
Never read an entire .firecrawl/*.md output file into context without checking size first — scraped pages routinely exceed 5000 lines. Use wc -l then grep/head to extract what you need.
Never use Firecrawl for real-time data (stock prices, sports scores) — scraping is 10+ seconds stale and costs credits per request; use direct APIs.
Never use Firecrawl for sites with official SDKs/APIs (e.g., GitHub → use gh).
Never omit -o flag — without it, output goes to stdout only and isn't persisted. Credits wasted, re-scraping required.
Never skip firecrawl --status before authenticated scraping — silent auth failures return empty output, not errors.