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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

• Cite sources for factual claims.
• Prefer primary sources when available.
• Flag uncertainty and conflicting evidence.
• Synthesize instead of listing scrape summaries.