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How to use Firecrawl with VS Code

You want Firecrawl inside VS Code so it can research a topic across the web, audit a website's documentation, extract structured records from web pages, and trace an issue through technical sources — without you copy-pasting between tabs. Here is the whole setup, once.

Create your Firecrawl gateway

The gateway is the thing VS Code connects to, and it is where you decide which Firecrawl tools an agent may use. You create it once and every client reuses it.

  1. Create an Arcade account

    Sign up and open the dashboard. The free tier is enough to follow this through.

  2. Create an MCP Gateway and select your Firecrawl tools

    In the dashboard, create a gateway and pick the Firecrawl tools you want to expose. The gateway is what your client connects to, and it is where tool access is decided.

  3. Copy your gateway URL

    Every client below needs it.

    https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/<YOUR-GATEWAY-SLUG>

Create a Firecrawl gateway Opens the gateway builder in your Arcade dashboard.

Connect the gateway to VS Code

  1. Add the server

    VS Code 1.107.0 or higher. Command Palette → MCP: Add Server… → choose HTTP, paste your gateway URL, and name it something like mcp-arcade.

  2. Start it and authenticate

    Click Start next to the server in mcp.json or under Extensions → MCP Servers - Installed, then approve the Arcade sign-in and consent screens.

  3. Try it out

    Open the chat pane, switch to Agent mode, and ask it to use one of your Firecrawl tools.

Full VS Code guide in the docs steps verified 2026-08-13

Try these web research prompts

VS Code can now act on your Firecrawl account. Click a prompt to copy it.

Set policy on CrawlWebsite, ExtractData, and CancelCrawl, and require approval before an agent starts a broad crawl or stops one in progress. Pair it with Contextual Access policies so untrusted page content cannot trigger those actions without a policy check.

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