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/firecrawl-parse

Convert a local file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, …) to markdown, or answer questions about its content. Use whenever the input is a file path, not a URL.

BOOST
From plugin
firecrawl
22813 skills1 command
Install
$ npx -y skills add firecrawl/firecrawl-claude-plugin --skill firecrawl-parse --agent claude-code

How it fires

How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.

  • Fires itselfAuto-invocation. Claude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.Auto-invocation is when the right skill fires by itself at the right moment, driven by a FLOW.md router and a hook, instead of you invoking it by name. It is the difference between a skill being installed and a skill actually getting used.Read the full definition →
  • You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
  • Slash command/firecrawl-parse

Context preview

The summary Claude sees to decide when to auto-load this skill.

Convert a local file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, …) to markdown, or answer questions about its content. Use whenever the input is a file path, not a URL.

SKILL.md

firecrawl-parse.SKILL.md
name: firecrawl-parse
description: |
  Convert a local file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, …) to markdown, or answer questions about its content. Use whenever the input is a file path, not a URL.
allowed-tools:
  - Bash(firecrawl *)
  - Bash(npx firecrawl-cli *)

firecrawl parse

Turn a local document into clean markdown on disk. Supports **PDF, DOCX, DOC, ODT, RTF, XLSX, XLS, HTML/HTM**.

Quick start

Always save to `.firecrawl/` with `-o` — parsed docs can be hundreds of KB and blow up context if streamed to stdout. Add `.firecrawl/` to `.gitignore`.

mkdir -p .firecrawl

# File → markdown
firecrawl parse ./paper.pdf -o .firecrawl/paper.md

# AI summary
firecrawl parse ./paper.pdf -S -o .firecrawl/paper-summary.md

# Ask a question about the doc
firecrawl parse ./paper.pdf -Q "What are the main conclusions?" \
  -o .firecrawl/paper-qa.md

Then read the output incrementally with `head`, `grep`, or `rg`.

Run `firecrawl parse --help` for the full option list.

**Done when:** the markdown, summary, or answer is written under `.firecrawl/` and you have inspected it with bounded reads.

Tips

  • Quote paths with spaces: `firecrawl parse "./My Doc.pdf" -o .firecrawl/mydoc.md`.
  • Max upload size: **50 MB** per file.
  • Credits: ~1 per PDF page; HTML is 1 flat.
  • Check `.firecrawl/` before re-parsing the same file.
  • To check your credit balance (recommended for batch processing and similar workflows), use `firecrawl credit-usage` (requires authentication).

See also

  • [firecrawl-scrape](../firecrawl-scrape/SKILL.md) — same idea for URLs
  • [firecrawl-build-scrape](https://github.com/firecrawl/skills/tree/main/skills/build/firecrawl-build-scrape) — building document extraction into an app instead of running it here
Read more
Ships withfirecrawl

Turn any website into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data — directly from Claude Code. This plugin adds the Firecrawl CLI as a skill to Claude Code, giving it the ability to scrape, search, crawl, and map the web.

Get the whole plugin, auto-invoked

Other skills on firecrawl.