CrawlForge
Integration
Claude Desktop
Claude Desktop5 Minutes

Claude Desktop Integration

Enable web scraping in Claude Desktop with CrawlForge MCP. Complete setup in under 5 minutes with a simple JSON configuration file.

Prerequisites

Claude Desktop

Download from claude.ai

Required
Node.js 18+

Install from nodejs.org

Required
API Key

Get from dashboard

Free

1Install CrawlForge MCP Server

Install the CrawlForge MCP server package globally using npm.

Bash
Verify installation: Run crawlforge-mcp --version to confirm installation.

2Get Your API Key

Sign up for a free account and generate your API key.

Create a free account

Get 1,000 free credits—no credit card required

Navigate to API Keys

Go to Dashboard → API Keys

Generate a new key

Click "Create API Key" and copy the key (starts with cf_)

Security: Never share your API key or commit it to version control. Store it securely.

3Configure Claude Desktop

Add CrawlForge MCP to Claude Desktop's configuration file.

Open the configuration file at:

Bash

Add the following configuration:

Json
Replace: cf_test_YOUR_KEY_HERE with your actual API key from the dashboard.

4Restart and Test

Restart Claude Desktop and test the integration.

Restart Claude Desktop

Fully quit and relaunch the application

Open a new conversation

Start a fresh chat to load the MCP server

Test with a simple prompt

Try: "Use CrawlForge to fetch https://example.com"

Example Prompts

"Fetch the content from https://example.com"

"Extract all links from https://example.com"

"Get metadata from https://example.com"

Available Tools

After setup, Claude will have access to all 18 CrawlForge MCP tools:

fetch_url

Fetch HTML from URLs

1 credits

extract_text

Extract clean text

1 credits

extract_links

Extract all links

1 credits

extract_metadata

Get page metadata

1 credits

scrape_structured

CSS selector extraction

2 credits

batch_scrape

Parallel batch scraping

1/URL

deep_research

AI-powered research

10 credits

search_web

Google search integration

5 credits

See the full API reference for all 18 tools and their parameters.

Troubleshooting

Tools Not Showing Up?

1. Verify the config file path is correct for your OS

2. Check JSON syntax is valid (use a JSON validator)

3. Ensure Node.js 18+ is installed: node --version

4. Restart Claude Desktop completely (not just close window)

Authentication Errors?

1. Verify API key starts with cf_

2. Check for spaces or quotes around the API key

3. Generate a new API key from the dashboard

4. Ensure key has not been deleted or expired

Rate Limit Issues?

1. Check your plan's rate limits in the dashboard

2. Free plan: 2 requests/second, 1,000 credits total

3. Upgrade to a paid plan for higher limits

4. Wait a few seconds between requests if hitting rate limits

Still having issues? Contact support at support@crawlforge.dev with your error message and config file (remove API key before sending).
Successfully integrated?
Explore all available tools and start building with AI-powered web scraping.