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docs(cli): state scrape defaults in help - #169

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sshkeda wants to merge 1 commit into
firecrawl:mainfrom
sshkeda:docs/scrape-help-facts
Open

docs(cli): state scrape defaults in help#169
sshkeda wants to merge 1 commit into
firecrawl:mainfrom
sshkeda:docs/scrape-help-facts

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@sshkeda

@sshkeda sshkeda commented Jul 27, 2026

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Why

firecrawl scrape is the command that downloads a web page. Its help text leaves out three facts a first-time user needs.

Here is the current help, and what each line does not say:

Scrape one or more URLs. Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently and saved to .firecrawl/

This describes what many URLs do. It never says what one URL does: the page prints to stdout. A user who scrapes one page and expects a file gets nothing on disk and no explanation.

-o, --output <path>  Output file path (default: stdout)

This says where one URL goes. It never says the flag only applies to a single URL.

-f, --format <formats>  Output format(s). Multiple formats can be specified with commas ...

This lists eleven formats. It never states which one you get by default: markdown.

Summary

The same three lines, after:

Scrape one or more URLs. A single URL prints to stdout by default. Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently and saved to .firecrawl/
-o, --output <path>  Output file path for a single URL (default: stdout)
-f, --format <formats>  Output format(s) (default: markdown). Multiple formats can be specified with commas ...

Test Plan

  • pnpm run build succeeds and pnpm run format:check passes on this exact commit.
  • Each added statement was checked against live behavior: one URL writes to stdout, multiple URLs save under .firecrawl/, and a bare scrape returns markdown.
  • We ran four AI coding agents in clean containers, once against the current CLI and once against this exact commit, every session on the identical prompt: "hey can you use the firecrawl cli to save the page at https://bun.com/docs as a markdown file?" All eight runs saved the file. Against the current CLI, all four agents ran scrape --help before their first scrape. With this commit, two of the four went straight to a correct scrape without it. All eight sessions and the comparison: full transcripts.

The scrape help described multi-URL behavior but not what a single URL
does, the -o flag did not say it applies to one URL only, and -f never
named its default format. This adds the three missing facts to the
description strings. No behavior changes.

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No issues found across 1 file

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