anycrawl

AnyCrawl Skill

AnyCrawl API integration for OpenClaw - Scrape, Crawl, and Search web content with high-performance multi-threaded crawling.

Setup

Method 1: Environment variable (Recommended)

export ANYCRAWL_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Make it permanent by adding to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

echo 'export ANYCRAWL_API_KEY="your-api-key"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Get your API key at: https://anycrawl.dev

Method 2: OpenClaw gateway config

openclaw config.patch --set ANYCRAWL_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Functions

1. anycrawl_scrape

Scrape a single URL and convert to LLM-ready structured data.

Parameters:

• url (string, required): URL to scrape
• engine (string, optional): Scraping engine - "cheerio" (default), "playwright", "puppeteer"
• formats (array, optional): Output formats - ["markdown"], ["html"], ["text"], ["json"], ["screenshot"]
• timeout (number, optional): Timeout in milliseconds (default: 30000)
• wait_for (number, optional): Delay before extraction in ms (browser engines only)
• wait_for_selector (string/object/array, optional): Wait for CSS selectors
• include_tags (array, optional): Include only these HTML tags (e.g., ["h1", "p", "article"])
• exclude_tags (array, optional): Exclude these HTML tags
• proxy (string, optional): Proxy URL (e.g., "http://proxy:port")
• json_options (object, optional): JSON extraction with schema/prompt
• extract_source (string, optional): "markdown" (default) or "html"

Examples:

// Basic scrape with default cheerio
anycrawl_scrape({ url: "https://example.com" })

// Scrape SPA with Playwright
anycrawl_scrape({ 
  url: "https://spa-example.com",
  engine: "playwright",
  formats: ["markdown", "screenshot"]
})

// Extract structured JSON
anycrawl_scrape({
  url: "https://product-page.com",
  engine: "cheerio",
  json_options: {
    schema: {
      type: "object",
      properties: {
        product_name: { type: "string" },
        price: { type: "number" },
        description: { type: "string" }
      },
      required: ["product_name", "price"]
    },
    user_prompt: "Extract product details from this page"
  }
})

2. anycrawl_search

Search Google and return structured results.

Parameters:

• query (string, required): Search query
• engine (string, optional): Search engine - "google" (default)
• limit (number, optional): Max results per page (default: 10)
• offset (number, optional): Number of results to skip (default: 0)
• pages (number, optional): Number of pages to retrieve (default: 1, max: 20)
• lang (string, optional): Language locale (e.g., "en", "zh", "vi")
• safe_search (number, optional): 0 (off), 1 (medium), 2 (high)
• scrape_options (object, optional): Scrape each result URL with these options

Examples:

// Basic search
anycrawl_search({ query: "OpenAI ChatGPT" })

// Multi-page search in Vietnamese
anycrawl_search({ 
  query: "hướng dẫn Node.js",
  pages: 3,
  lang: "vi"
})

// Search and auto-scrape results
anycrawl_search({
  query: "best AI tools 2026",
  limit: 5,
  scrape_options: {
    engine: "cheerio",
    formats: ["markdown"]
  }
})

3. anycrawl_crawl_start

Start crawling an entire website (async job).

Parameters:

• url (string, required): Seed URL to start crawling
• engine (string, optional): "cheerio" (default), "playwright", "puppeteer"
• strategy (string, optional): "all", "same-domain" (default), "same-hostname", "same-origin"
• max_depth (number, optional): Max depth from seed URL (default: 10)
• limit (number, optional): Max pages to crawl (default: 100)
• include_paths (array, optional): Path patterns to include (e.g., ["/blog/*"])
• exclude_paths (array, optional): Path patterns to exclude (e.g., ["/admin/*"])
• scrape_paths (array, optional): Only scrape URLs matching these patterns
• scrape_options (object, optional): Per-page scrape options

Examples:

// Crawl entire website
anycrawl_crawl_start({ 
  url: "https://docs.example.com",
  engine: "cheerio",
  max_depth: 5,
  limit: 50
})

// Crawl only blog posts
anycrawl_crawl_start({
  url: "https://example.com",
  strategy: "same-domain",
  include_paths: ["/blog/*"],
  exclude_paths: ["/blog/tags/*"],
  scrape_options: {
    formats: ["markdown"]
  }
})

// Crawl product pages only
anycrawl_crawl_start({
  url: "https://shop.example.com",
  strategy: "same-domain",
  scrape_paths: ["/products/*"],
  limit: 200
})

4. anycrawl_crawl_status

Check crawl job status.

Parameters:

• job_id (string, required): Crawl job ID

Example:

anycrawl_crawl_status({ job_id: "7a2e165d-8f81-4be6-9ef7-23222330a396" })

5. anycrawl_crawl_results

Get crawl results (paginated).

Parameters:

• job_id (string, required): Crawl job ID
• skip (number, optional): Number of results to skip (default: 0)

Example:

// Get first 100 results
anycrawl_crawl_results({ job_id: "xxx", skip: 0 })

// Get next 100 results
anycrawl_crawl_results({ job_id: "xxx", skip: 100 })

6. anycrawl_crawl_cancel

Cancel a running crawl job.

Parameters:

• job_id (string, required): Crawl job ID

7. anycrawl_search_and_scrape

Quick helper: Search Google then scrape top results.

Parameters:

• query (string, required): Search query
• max_results (number, optional): Max results to scrape (default: 3)
• scrape_engine (string, optional): Engine for scraping (default: "cheerio")
• formats (array, optional): Output formats (default: ["markdown"])
• lang (string, optional): Search language

Example:

anycrawl_search_and_scrape({
  query: "latest AI news",
  max_results: 5,
  formats: ["markdown"]
})

Engine Selection Guide

Engine	Best For	Speed	JS Rendering
cheerio	Static HTML, news, blogs	⚡ Fastest	❌ No
playwright	SPAs, complex web apps	? Slower	✅ Yes
puppeteer	Chrome-specific, metrics	? Slower	✅ Yes

Response Format

All responses follow this structure:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": { ... },
  "message": "Optional message"
}

Error response:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "Error type",
  "message": "Human-readable message"
}

Common Error Codes

• 400 - Bad Request (validation errors)
• 401 - Unauthorized (invalid API key)
• 402 - Payment Required (insufficient credits)
• 404 - Not Found
• 429 - Rate limit exceeded
• 500 - Internal server error

API Limits

• Rate limits apply based on your plan
• Crawl jobs expire after 24 hours
• Max crawl limit: depends on credits

Links

• API Docs: https://docs.anycrawl.dev
• Website: https://anycrawl.dev
• Playground: https://anycrawl.dev/playground