firecrawl instruct

Interact with scraped pages in a live browser session. Scrape a page first, then use natural language prompts or code to click, fill forms, navigate, and extract data.

When to use

• Content requires interaction: clicks, form fills, pagination, login

• scrape failed because content is behind JavaScript interaction

• You need to navigate a multi-step flow

• Last resort in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → instruct

• Never use instruct for web searches — use search instead

Quick start

1. Scrape a page (scrape ID is saved automatically)

firecrawl scrape "<url>"

2. Interact with the page using natural language

firecrawl interact --prompt "Click the login button" firecrawl interact --prompt "Fill in the email field with test@example.com" firecrawl interact --prompt "Extract the pricing table"

3. Or use code for precise control

firecrawl interact --code "agent-browser click @e5" --language bash firecrawl interact --code "agent-browser snapshot -i" --language bash

4. Stop the session when done

firecrawl interact stop

Options

Option Description

--prompt <text>

Natural language instruction (use this OR --code)

--code <code>

Code to execute in the browser session

--language <lang>

Language for code: bash, python, node

--timeout <seconds>

Execution timeout (default: 30, max: 300)

--scrape-id <id>

Target a specific scrape (default: last scrape)

-o, --output <path>

Output file path

Profiles

Use --profile on the scrape to persist browser state (cookies, localStorage) across scrapes:

Session 1: Login and save state

firecrawl scrape "https://app.example.com/login" --profile my-app firecrawl interact --prompt "Fill in email with user@example.com and click login"

Session 2: Come back authenticated

firecrawl scrape "https://app.example.com/dashboard" --profile my-app firecrawl interact --prompt "Extract the dashboard data"

Read-only reconnect (no writes to profile state):

firecrawl scrape "https://app.example.com" --profile my-app --no-save-changes

Tips

• Always scrape first — interact requires a scrape ID from a previous firecrawl scrape call

• The scrape ID is saved automatically, so you don't need --scrape-id for subsequent interact calls

• Use firecrawl interact stop to free resources when done

• For parallel work, scrape multiple pages and interact with each using --scrape-id

See also

• firecrawl-scrape — try scrape first, escalate to instruct only when needed

• firecrawl-search — for web searches (never use instruct for searching)

• firecrawl-agent — AI-powered extraction (less manual control)