firecrawl-lean

Token-efficient Firecrawl skill for Coding Agents.

Web search, scrape, crawl, and extract — ~60% fewer tokens than the official skill.

What this is

A single-file Claude Code skill that gives Claude the full Firecrawl CLI — web search, scraping, crawling, structured extraction, browser automation — in a form optimized for token efficiency.

The official Firecrawl skill set ships as 5 separate skills (firecrawl, firecrawl-crawl, firecrawl-agent, firecrawl-instruct, firecrawl-browser). Each loads independently, repeats shared context, and costs tokens every time Claude reads them. This skill merges all five into one lean reference.

Why lean matters

Every skill file loads into Claude's context window on each turn. Bloated skills = wasted tokens = higher cost + slower responses.

Fewer tokens in context = more room for your actual task.

Install

npx skills add https://github.com/alexsmedile/firecrawl-lean

Requires Firecrawl CLI:

npm install -g firecrawl-cli && firecrawl login

What's covered

Escalation pattern

search → scrape → map + scrape → crawl → interact / browser / agent

Start cheap. Escalate only when needed. The skill tells Claude when and why to step up.

Token efficiency techniques

• One file, no repetition — shared context (output rules, auth, credits) written once
• Examples over prose — commands show usage; no paragraphs explaining what --limit does
• Advanced commands stubbed — crawl/interact/agent/browser are present but not padded; install dedicated skills only if you need them
• Output rules baked in — Claude always writes to .firecrawl/ and never dumps raw output to context

Comparison with official skills

The official Firecrawl skills are excellent and full-featured. This skill is for users who:

• Run Claude Code frequently and care about context window cost
• Want a single install, not five
• Don't need the extended documentation — just the commands

If you need deep crawl configuration, browser profiles, or parallel agent jobs, the official skills have more detail.

Credits

Built on top of Firecrawl and the Firecrawl CLI. This skill is an independent, community-maintained efficiency wrapper — not affiliated with Firecrawl.