Grimm: Agentic Crawling made easy - Cloudflare Crawl API, Chrome Dev Tools MCP & Firehose/Ahrefs

Key Takeaways:

• Grimm on next level crawling possibilities for Agents:

  • Cloudflare /crawl REST API offers crawling based on Cloudflare infrastructure: "𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱𝗳𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗯 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘄𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴"

    • REST API with POST request to initiate crawl and GET to retrieve results

    • Sitemap or Spider crawl mode

    • Javascript rendering in headless browser

    • Result as HTML, markdown or JSON with using a prompt against the crawled pages

    • incremental crawling (only crawl changes)

    • further options even include authentication

    • currently allows 5 crawls per day on the free plan

  • Chrome Dev Tools MCP: Your coding agent can now attach to a live Chrome session

    • 𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚎://𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝/Hashtag#𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚝𝚎-𝚍𝚎𝚋𝚞𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐 - one toggle in Chrome 146+, configure --𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚘𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚌𝚝, and your coding agent has a structured live connection to Chrome

    • Use cases:

      • you spot a failing network request in the Network panel, select it, hand it directly to your agent

      • The agent reads the page via accessibility tree - structured element IDs

      • Claude Code, Cursor, gemini-cli, Copilot all supported - via 26 discrete MCP tools covering automation, debugging, and performance analysis: 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎_𝚜𝚗𝚊𝚙𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚝, 𝚌𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚔, 𝚗𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝚗𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔_𝚛𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝, 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎_𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝_𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚎 and more. Google has announced more panel data coming incrementally.

• Furthermore, Ahrefs introduced a web streaming API based on their infrastructure called firehose.com

  • Get web changes in an instant - make sure to use all relevant parameters from their docs

  • Use cases include: Monitoring competitors, brand mentions

• Further, Cloudflare added a feature for domains using their service to automatically provide the markdown of a page if "Accept: text/markdown" is added to the request header

• Grimm sees those developments as major shifts towards an agentic web where agents are enabled to access web pages from an API without mainting heavy infrastructure theirselves

Sources:

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bastiangrimm_remote-share-7439225193199415296-nI1n/

• https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-devtools-mcp-debug-your-browser-session

• https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/crawl-endpoint/

• https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-03-10-br-crawl-endpoint/

• https://x.com/timsoulo/status/2032560441352925225

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bastiangrimm_%F0%9D%97%96%F0%9D%97%B9%F0%9D%97%BC%F0%9D%98%82%F0%9D%97%B1%F0%9D%97%B3%F0%9D%97%B9%F0%9D%97%AE%F0%9D%97%BF%F0%9D%97%B2-%F0%9D%97%B7%F0%9D%98%82%F0%9D%98%80%F0%9D%98%81-%F0%9D%97%B0%F0%9D%97%BC%F0%9D%97%BA%F0%9D%97%BA%F0%9D%97%BC%F0%9D%97%B1%F0%9D%97%B6%F0%9D%98%81%F0%9D%97%B6%F0%9D%98%87%F0%9D%97%B2%F0%9D%97%B1-share-7437436561937358848-lfhE/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chris-long-marketing_technical-seos-this-is-huge-cloudflare-activity-7429508432413728768-n-a8/

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Vh3yVcHq0