Web Scraping with Intelligent Strategy Selection

When This Skill Activates

Activate automatically when user requests:

• "Scrape [website]"
• "Extract data from [site]"
• "Get product information from [URL]"
• "Find all links/pages on [site]"
• "I'm getting blocked" or "Getting 403 errors" (loads strategies/anti-blocking.md)
• "Make this an Apify Actor" (loads apify/ subdirectory)
• "Productionize this scraper"

Proactive Workflow

This skill follows a systematic 5-phase approach to web scraping, always starting with interactive reconnaissance and ending with production-ready code.

Phase 1: INTERACTIVE RECONNAISSANCE (Critical First Step)

When user says "scrape X", immediately start with hands-on reconnaissance using MCP tools:

DO NOT jump to automated checks or implementation - reconnaissance prevents wasted effort and discovers hidden APIs.

Use Playwright MCP & Chrome DevTools MCP:

1. Open site in real browser (Playwright MCP)

• Navigate like a real user
• Observe page loading behavior (SSR? SPA? Loading states?)
• Take screenshots for reference
• Test basic interactions

2. Monitor network traffic (Chrome DevTools via Playwright)

• Watch XHR/Fetch requests in real-time
• Find API endpoints returning JSON (10-100x faster than HTML scraping!)
• Analyze request/response patterns
• Document headers, cookies, authentication tokens
• Extract pagination parameters

3. Test site interactions

• Pagination: URL-based? API? Infinite scroll?
• Filtering and search: How do they work?
• Dynamic content loading: Triggers and patterns
• Authentication flows: Required? Optional?

4. Assess protection mechanisms

• Cloudflare/bot detection
• CAPTCHA requirements
• Rate limiting behavior (test with multiple requests)
• Fingerprinting scripts

5. Generate Intelligence Report

• Site architecture (framework, rendering method)
• Discovered APIs/endpoints with full specs
• Protection mechanisms and required countermeasures
• Optimal extraction strategy (API > Sitemap > HTML)
• Time/complexity estimates

See: workflows/reconnaissance.md for complete reconnaissance guide with MCP examples

Why this matters: Reconnaissance discovers hidden APIs (eliminating need for HTML scraping), identifies blockers before coding, and provides intelligence for optimal strategy selection. Never skip this step.

Phase 2: AUTOMATIC DISCOVERY (Validate Reconnaissance)

After Phase 1 reconnaissance, validate findings with automated checks:

1. Check for Sitemaps

# Automatically check these locations
curl -s https://[site]/robots.txt | grep -i Sitemap
curl -I https://[site]/sitemap.xml
curl -I https://[site]/sitemap_index.xml

Log findings clearly:

• ✓ "Found sitemap at /sitemap.xml with ~1,234 URLs"
• ✓ "Found sitemap index with 5 sub-sitemaps"
• ✗ "No sitemap detected at common locations"

Why this matters: Sitemaps provide instant URL discovery (60x faster than crawling)

2. Investigate APIs

Prompt user:

Should I check for JSON APIs first? (Highly recommended)

Benefits of APIs vs HTML scraping:
• 10-100x faster execution
• More reliable (structured JSON vs fragile HTML)
• Less bandwidth usage
• Easier to maintain

Check for APIs? [Y/n]

If yes, guide user:

1. Open browser DevTools → Network tab
2. Navigate the target website
3. Look for XHR/Fetch requests
4. Check for endpoints: /api/, /v1/, /v2/, /graphql, /_next/data/
5. Analyze request/response format (JSON, GraphQL, REST)

Log findings:

• ✓ "Found API: GET /api/products/{id} (returns JSON)"
• ✓ "Found GraphQL endpoint: /graphql"
• ✗ "No obvious public APIs detected"

3. Analyze Site Structure

Automatically assess:

• JavaScript-heavy? (Look for React, Vue, Angular indicators)
• Authentication required? (Login walls, auth tokens)
• Page count estimate (from sitemap or site exploration)
• Rate limiting indicators (robots.txt directives)

Phase 3: STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION

Based on Phases 1-2 findings, present 2-3 options with clear reasoning:

Example Output Template:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📊 Analysis of example.com
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase 1 Intelligence (Reconnaissance):
✓ API discovered via DevTools: GET /api/products?page=N&limit=100
✓ Framework: Next.js (SSR + CSR hybrid)
✓ Protection: Cloudflare detected, rate limit ~60/min
✗ No authentication required

Phase 2 Validation:
✓ Sitemap found: 1,234 product URLs (validates API total)
✓ Static HTML fallback available if needed

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Recommended Approaches:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⭐ Option 1: Hybrid (Sitemap + API) [RECOMMENDED]
   ✓ Use sitemap to get all 1,234 product URLs instantly
   ✓ Extract product IDs from URLs
   ✓ Fetch data via API (fast, reliable JSON)

   Estimated time: 8-12 minutes
   Complexity: Low-Medium
   Data quality: Excellent
   Speed: Very Fast

⚡ Option 2: Sitemap + Playwright
   ✓ Use sitemap for URLs
   ✓ Scrape HTML with Playwright

   Estimated time: 15-20 minutes
   Complexity: Medium
   Data quality: Good
   Speed: Fast

🔧 Option 3: Pure API (if sitemap fails)
   ✓ Discover product IDs through API exploration
   ✓ Fetch all data via API

   Estimated time: 10-15 minutes
   Complexity: Medium
   Data quality: Excellent
   Speed: Fast

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
My Recommendation: Option 1 (Hybrid)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Reasoning:
• Sitemap gives us complete URL list (instant discovery)
• API provides clean, structured data (no HTML parsing)
• Combines speed of sitemap with reliability of API
• Best of both worlds

Proceed with Option 1? [Y/n]

Key principles:

• Always recommend the SIMPLEST approach that works
• Sitemap > API > Playwright (in terms of simplicity)
• Show time estimates and complexity
• Explain reasoning clearly

Phase 4: ITERATIVE IMPLEMENTATION

Implement scraper incrementally, starting simple and adding complexity only as needed.

Core Pattern:

1. Implement recommended approach (minimal code)
2. Test with small batch (5-10 items)
3. Validate data quality
4. Scale to full dataset or fallback
5. Handle blocking if encountered
6. Add robustness (error handling, retries, logging)

See: workflows/implementation.md for complete implementation patterns and code examples

Phase 5: PRODUCTIONIZATION (On Request)

Convert scraper to production-ready Apify Actor.

Activation triggers:

• "Make this an Apify Actor"
• "Productionize this scraper"
• "Deploy to Apify"
• "Create an actor from this"

Core Pattern:

1. Confirm TypeScript preference (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED)
2. Initialize with apify create command (CRITICAL)
3. Port scraping logic to Actor format
4. Test locally and deploy

See: workflows/productionization.md for complete productionization workflow and apify/ directory for all Actor development guides

Quick Reference

Common Patterns

Pattern 1: Sitemap-Based Scraping

import { RobotsFile, PlaywrightCrawler, Dataset } from 'crawlee';

// Auto-discover and parse sitemaps
const robots = await RobotsFile.find('https://example.com');
const urls = await robots.parseUrlsFromSitemaps();

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    async requestHandler({ page, request }) {
        const data = await page.evaluate(() => ({
            title: document.title,
            // ... extract data
        }));
        await Dataset.pushData(data);
    },
});

await crawler.addRequests(urls);
await crawler.run();

See examples/sitemap-basic.js for complete example.

Pattern 2: API-Based Scraping

import { gotScraping } from 'got-scraping';

const productIds = [123, 456, 789];

for (const id of productIds) {
    const response = await gotScraping({
        url: `https://api.example.com/products/${id}`,
        responseType: 'json',
    });

    console.log(response.body);
}

See examples/api-scraper.js for complete example.

Pattern 3: Hybrid (Sitemap + API)

// Get URLs from sitemap
const robots = await RobotsFile.find('https://shop.com');
const urls = await robots.parseUrlsFromSitemaps();

// Extract IDs from URLs
const productIds = urls
    .map(url => url.match(/\/products\/(\d+)/)?.[1])
    .filter(Boolean);

// Fetch data via API
for (const id of productIds) {
    const data = await gotScraping({
        url: `https://api.shop.com/v1/products/${id}`,
        responseType: 'json',
    });
    // Process data
}

See examples/hybrid-sitemap-api.js for complete example.

Directory Navigation

This skill uses progressive disclosure - detailed information is organized in subdirectories and loaded only when needed.

Workflows (Implementation Patterns)

For: Step-by-step workflow guides for each phase

• workflows/reconnaissance.md - Phase 1 interactive reconnaissance (CRITICAL)
• workflows/implementation.md - Phase 4 iterative implementation patterns
• workflows/productionization.md - Phase 5 Apify Actor creation workflow

Strategies (Deep Dives)

For: Detailed guides on specific scraping approaches

• strategies/sitemap-discovery.md - Complete sitemap guide (4 patterns)
• strategies/api-discovery.md - Finding and using APIs
• strategies/playwright-scraping.md - Browser-based scraping
• strategies/cheerio-scraping.md - HTTP-only scraping
• strategies/hybrid-approaches.md - Combining strategies
• strategies/anti-blocking.md - Fingerprinting & proxies for blocked sites

Examples (Runnable Code)

For: Working code to reference or execute

JavaScript Learning Examples (Simple standalone scripts):

• examples/sitemap-basic.js - Simple sitemap scraper
• examples/api-scraper.js - Pure API approach
• examples/playwright-basic.js - Basic Playwright scraper
• examples/hybrid-sitemap-api.js - Combined approach
• examples/iterative-fallback.js - Try sitemap→API→Playwright

TypeScript Production Examples (Complete Actors):

• apify/examples/basic-scraper/ - Sitemap + Playwright
• apify/examples/anti-blocking/ - Fingerprinting + proxies
• apify/examples/hybrid-api/ - Sitemap + API (optimal)

Reference (Quick Lookup)

For: Quick patterns and troubleshooting

• reference/regex-patterns.md - Common URL regex patterns
• reference/selector-guide.md - Playwright selector strategies
• reference/fingerprint-patterns.md - Common fingerprint configurations
• reference/anti-patterns.md - What NOT to do

Apify (Production Deployment)

For: Creating production Apify Actors

• apify/README.md - When and how to use Apify
• apify/typescript-first.md - Why TypeScript for actors
• apify/cli-workflow.md - apify create workflow (CRITICAL)
• apify/initialization.md - Complete setup guide
• apify/input-schemas.md - Input validation patterns
• apify/configuration.md - actor.json setup
• apify/deployment.md - Testing and deployment
• apify/templates/ - TypeScript boilerplate

Note: Each file is self-contained and can be read independently. Claude will navigate to specific files as needed.

Core Principles

1. Progressive Enhancement

Start with the simplest approach that works:

• Sitemap > API > Playwright
• Static > Dynamic
• HTTP > Browser

2. Proactive Discovery

Always investigate before implementing:

• Check for sitemaps automatically
• Look for APIs (ask user to check DevTools)
• Analyze site structure

3. Iterative Implementation

Build incrementally:

• Small test batch first (5-10 items)
• Validate quality
• Scale or fallback
• Add robustness last

4. Production-Ready Code

When productionizing:

• Use TypeScript (strongly recommended)
• Use apify create (never manual setup)
• Add proper error handling
• Include logging and monitoring

Remember: Sitemaps first, APIs second, scraping last!

For detailed guidance on any topic, navigate to the relevant subdirectory file listed above.