Firecrawl Deep Research
Use this only for report-scale research: a rigorous, cited synthesis the user
explicitly wants delivered as a formal written report. If the request is a
product pick, a top-N list, a quick lookup, or anything answerable with a short
search, stop; do not use this skill, let the request be handled the standard
way.
This skill gathers its evidence from the open web. If the evidence base is the
published literature — a literature review, or a biomedical, clinical, or other
scientific topic where the answer lives in papers — use
firecrawl-research-papers instead; it
queries Firecrawl's paper index rather than searching websites.
Onboarding Interview
Infer the topic and output format from context. Before starting, unless already specified, always ask one short question to define the scope:
"How long do you want this research task to run?"
Map the answer to a depth tier in the Collection Plan below:
- A few minutes → Quick
- ~10-15 minutes → Thorough
- Longer / no limit → Exhaustive
If the topic itself is unclear, you may ask at most 1-2 additional concise
questions (topic, or a critical angle/source constraint). Otherwise proceed once
the runtime is set.
Firecrawl Collection Plan
Use Firecrawl search and scrape through the CLI or equivalent tool surface. Match
depth to the runtime the user chose during onboarding.
- Quick (~a few minutes): search 3-5 queries and scrape 5-10 high-quality sources.
- Thorough (~10-15 minutes): search 5-10 queries from different angles and scrape 15-25 sources.
- Exhaustive (longer): search 10+ queries and scrape 25+ sources, including primary sources, research papers, expert views, and contrarian sources.
Avoid re-scraping URLs already returned with full content from a search-with-scrape result.
When Published Papers Are The Evidence
Search and scrape reach web pages. They do not query Firecrawl's research paper
index, which holds paper abstracts with full text reachable per paper — largely
biomedical and life-science literature from PubMed, bioRxiv, and medRxiv, plus
arXiv preprints in CS, physics, and math.
Hand off to firecrawl-research-papers
when the report's evidence base is the published literature — a biomedical,
clinical, drug, gene, disease, epidemiology, or public-health topic, or any
request phrased as a literature review, systematic review, or survey of studies.
That skill uses firecrawl_research_* (MCP) / firecrawl research (CLI) to
search abstracts, expand to related papers, and verify claims inside a paper
body — none of which plain search and scrape can do.
If the report needs both — the literature and market, policy, or news context —
run the paper work through that skill and keep the web collection above for the
rest, then synthesize here.
Note that passing categories: ["research"] to Firecrawl search does not query
the paper index either. It filters an ordinary web search to research-affiliated
websites — the list includes PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and publisher
sites — and returns their web pages, not the paper records behind them.
Parallel Work
If appropriate, use sub-agents or equivalent parallel task runners by research angle:
- overview and definitions
- technical or implementation details
- market and industry context
- contrarian views, risks, and limitations
- primary sources and official docs
Each researcher should return claims, source URLs, source quality notes, and uncertainty.
Final Deliverable
Default structure:
# Deep Research: [Topic]
## Executive Summary
[2-3 paragraphs]
## Key Findings
[Numbered findings with source links]
## Detailed Analysis
[Themes, evidence, and synthesis]
## Contrarian Views And Risks
[Counterarguments, limitations, failure modes]
## Open Questions
[What remains uncertain]
## Sources
[Every URL used with a one-line note]
## Rerun Inputs
workflow: firecrawl-deep-research
topic: [topic]
depth: [quick/thorough/exhaustive]
output: [markdown/json/brief]
Quality Bar
- Cite sources for factual claims.
- Prefer primary sources when available.
- Flag uncertainty and conflicting evidence.
- Synthesize instead of listing scrape summaries.