name: firecrawl-install-auth description: 'Install and configure Firecrawl SDK authentication for web scraping.

Use when setting up a new Firecrawl integration, configuring API keys,

or initializing Firecrawl in your project.

Trigger with phrases like "install firecrawl", "setup firecrawl",

"firecrawl auth", "configure firecrawl API key".

' allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit, Bash(npm:), Bash(pip:), Grep version: 1.0.0 license: MIT author: Jeremy Longshore jeremy@intentsolutions.io tags:

• saas
• firecrawl
• api
• authentication compatibility: Designed for Claude Code, also compatible with Codex and OpenClaw

Firecrawl Install & Auth

Overview

Install the Firecrawl SDK and configure API key authentication. Firecrawl turns any website into LLM-ready markdown or structured data. The SDK is published as @mendable/firecrawl-js on npm and firecrawl-py on PyPI.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ or Python 3.10+
• Package manager (npm, pnpm, yarn, or pip)
• Firecrawl API key from firecrawl.dev/app (free tier available)

Instructions

Step 1: Install the SDK

set -euo pipefail
# Node.js (official npm package)
npm install @mendable/firecrawl-js

# Python
pip install firecrawl-py

Step 2: Configure Your API Key

# Set the environment variable (SDK reads FIRECRAWL_API_KEY automatically)
export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY="fc-YOUR_API_KEY"

# Or add to .env file (use dotenv in your app)
echo 'FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR_API_KEY' >> .env

All Firecrawl API keys start with fc-. Get yours at firecrawl.dev/app.

Step 3: Verify Connection — TypeScript

import FirecrawlApp from "@mendable/firecrawl-js";

const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!,
});

// Quick connection test: scrape a simple page
const result = await firecrawl.scrapeUrl("https://example.com", {
  formats: ["markdown"],
});

if (result.success) {
  console.log("Firecrawl connected. Page title:", result.metadata?.title);
  console.log("Content length:", result.markdown?.length, "chars");
} else {
  console.error("Firecrawl error:", result.error);
}

Step 4: Verify Connection — Python

from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp

firecrawl = FirecrawlApp(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")

# Quick connection test
result = firecrawl.scrape_url("https://example.com", params={
    "formats": ["markdown"]
})

print(f"Title: {result.get('metadata', {}).get('title')}")
print(f"Content: {len(result.get('markdown', ''))} chars")

Step 5: Self-Hosted Setup (Optional)

// Point to your own Firecrawl instance instead of api.firecrawl.dev
const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: "any-key",  // required even for self-hosted
  apiUrl: "http://localhost:3002",  // self-hosted Firecrawl URL
});

Output

• @mendable/firecrawl-js installed in node_modules/
• FIRECRAWL_API_KEY environment variable configured
• Successful scrape confirming API connectivity

Error Handling

Examples

TypeScript with dotenv

import "dotenv/config";
import FirecrawlApp from "@mendable/firecrawl-js";

const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!,
});

Python with Environment Variable

import os
from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp

firecrawl = FirecrawlApp(api_key=os.environ["FIRECRAWL_API_KEY"])

Verify .gitignore Protects Secrets

set -euo pipefail
# Ensure .env files are gitignored
grep -q "^\.env" .gitignore 2>/dev/null || echo -e "\n.env\n.env.local\n.env.*.local" >> .gitignore

Resources

• Firecrawl Quickstart
• Firecrawl Dashboard
• Node SDK on npm
• Python SDK on PyPI

Next Steps

After successful auth, proceed to firecrawl-hello-world for your first real scrape.