Firecrawl Developer Index

Firecrawl Developer Index

Answer a developer question from the primary source: the issue where the bug was reported, the merged pull request that fixed it, the README or documentation page that states the contract. A blog post that describes a behaviour is a weaker answer than the passage that defines it, so reach for the index first and the open web second. The repository half of the index covers public repositories only. Private or internal repositories are not in it, so a question about private code needs a different route: read that code directly.

There is no fixed recipe. Read the question, decide what kind it is, and choose the approach below. A literal error string wants a different move than "how do I do X". Don't run machinery a question doesn't call for.

The tools, and what each is uniquely good at

• HTTP: GET|POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/search/developer MCP: firecrawl_developer_search(query, k?, skills?) CLI: firecrawl developer <query> [--limit <n>] Ranked results over the whole index. Each carries id (issue:owner/repo#123), url, and the matched passages in markdown, so tables and code blocks survive. The artifact kind is the id prefix: doc:, issue:, pull_request:, or readme:. The default first move for a developer question. It is the only surface that returns the passages, which is what lets you answer instead of pointing at a page. k / --limit is 1–100 and defaults to 10. skills="only" (HTTP/MCP only) restricts the search to agent-skill files. Keyless; send Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY for higher rate limits.

• MCP: firecrawl_search(query, categories: ["developer"]) CLI: firecrawl search <query> --categories developer Developer hits in a developer group beside web, each with url, title, description (the matched passage), position, and category: "developer" — web results carry no category, so that is the field to key on when merging. Use this when you are already running a web search and want developer sources weighed in the same call. It exposes none of the filters and no passage control.

• MCP: firecrawl_scrape(url) / firecrawl_search(query) CLI: firecrawl scrape <url> / firecrawl search <query> General web fetch and search, for what no primary source states: a comparison between two libraries, an outage, a migration write-up, a project with no public repository or indexed docs. Also the follow-through when a hit is the right page but you need all of it — scrape the result's url.

Filters, and what each one costs you

Only the HTTP surface takes these. On GET, pass types=issue,pull_request or repeat the parameter; on POST, pass arrays. All are optional.

• types — which of doc, issue, pull_request, readme to search. Defaults to all four. Narrowing here is the cheapest way to sharpen a query.
• repos (owner/name) scopes the repository half, meaning issue, pull_request, and readme; sources (documentation source ids, at most 20) scopes the documentation half, meaning doc. Passing both unions the halves rather than intersecting them. Both echo back in the response with indexed: true|false — that is how you tell "not in the index" from "found nothing".
• A filter that cannot match any requested type is a 400, not an empty list: repos with no repository type in types, or sources without doc.
• passages (1–5, default 1) is the maximum passages per result, not a guarantee. Raise it when one page is clearly the right page but the first passage is the wrong part of it.
• language, topic, license, min_stars, max_stars, archived, fork describe a repository. Most documentation pages in the index have no repository behind them, so no repository fact can admit or exclude one. Send any of these without a sources scope and the response holds repository evidence only — issue, pull_request, readme. That is the design, not an index fault: do not retry it and do not report the index broken. To keep documentation, drop the repository filters, or scope the documentation half with sources and read the sources echo to confirm the id is indexed.