Firecrawl Build Search

# 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 of **web pages** before deeper extraction - query-to-URL pipelines for later `/scrape` or `/interact`

Note that "research workflow" here means discovering web pages. If the product is searching **published papers**, that is a different surface — see the escalation rules below.

## Escalation Rules

- If you already have the URL, use [firecrawl-build-scrape](../firecrawl-build-scrape/SKILL.md). - If the result page then requires clicks or form interaction, escalate to [firecrawl-build-interact](../firecrawl-build-interact/SKILL.md). - If the feature searches **published research papers** — biomedical, clinical, and life-science literature (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv) or arXiv preprints — `/search` is the wrong surface. Use the research paper index instead: [firecrawl-research-index](../firecrawl-research-index/SKILL.md). Passing `categories: ["research"]` to `/search` does **not** query that index; it filters an ordinary web search to research-affiliated websites (the list includes PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and publisher sites) and returns page results from them — no abstract search, related-paper expansion, or full-text passages. - If the feature answers developer questions from issues, pull requests, READMEs, or documentation pages, use the developer index instead: [firecrawl-developer-index](../firecrawl-developer-index/SKILL.md). The same caveat applies to `categories: ["developer"]`.

## 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](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/node) - **Python**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python) - **Rust**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust) - **Java**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java) - **Elixir**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir) - **cURL / REST**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/curl](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/curl)

## See Also

- [firecrawl-build](../firecrawl-build/SKILL.md) - [firecrawl-build-scrape](../firecrawl-build-scrape/SKILL.md) - [firecrawl-build-interact](../firecrawl-build-interact/SKILL.md) - [firecrawl-research-index](../firecrawl-research-index/SKILL.md) - [firecrawl-developer-index](../firecrawl-developer-index/SKILL.md)