Firecrawl Parse

firecrawl/firecrawl-parse

| Efficiently extract and convert the contents of any local file—such as PDF, DOCX, DOC, ODT, RTF, XLSX, XLS, or HTML—into clean, well-formatted markdown saved to disk. Use this skill whenever the user requests to parse, read, or extract information from a file on their computer, including phrases like “parse this PDF”, “convert this document”, “read this file”, “extract text from”, or when a local file path (not a URL) is provided. This skill offers advanced options like generating AI-powered summaries and answering questions based on the file's content. Prefer this tool over `scrape` when handling local files to deliver precise, structured outputs for downstream tasks.

This is a copy. The original lives at aiskillstore/firecrawl-parse.

685 tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

stars on the repo

on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/firecrawl/cli --skill firecrawl-parse

What it tells the agent to use

found in the instruction text

Bash runs shell commands — read the instruction before connecting

Grep reads your files

The instruction itself

6 sections, as written by the author

firecrawl parse

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

When to use

You have a file on disk (not a URL) and want its text as markdown
User drops a PDF/DOCX and asks what it says, or to summarize it
Use scrape instead when the source is a URL

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 head, grep, rg etc., or incrementally read the file - don't load the whole thing at once.

Options

| Option | Description |

| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------- |

| -S, --summary | AI-generated summary |

| -Q, --query <prompt> | Ask a question about the parsed content |

| -o, --output <path> | Output file path — always use this |

| -f, --format <fmt> | markdown (default), html, summary |

| --timeout <ms> | Timeout for the parse job |

| --timing | Show request duration |

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 the firecrawl credit-usage command.

Repackaged in 1 other repositories

same content, different owner

aiskillstore/marketplace open on GitHub →

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take firecrawl/firecrawl-parse from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.

Install what it needs

The instructions reference npx. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.