mapping-urls

Mapping URLs

kreuzcrawl map <url> discovers the URLs a site exposes without rendering or

extracting any page content. It reads sitemap.xml (including nested

sitemaps), then falls back to link extraction from the seed page. Use it to

plan a crawl, audit a site's surface, or feed a URL list into another tool.

Quick recipe

kreuzcrawl map https://example.com --limit 500 --search docs --format markdown

Markdown output prints one URL per line — convenient to pipe into a file or a

follow-up crawl. JSON output (default) returns a structured MapResult.

Flag surface

| Flag | Default | Purpose |

| ---------------------- | ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |

| --limit | — | Maximum number of URLs to return. Unbounded if unset. |

| --search | — | Case-insensitive substring filter on discovered URLs. |

| --respect-robots-txt | off | Honour robots.txt. Pass it for any third-party host. |

| --format | json | json (full MapResult) or markdown (one URL per line). |

| --timeout | 30000 | Per-request timeout in ms. |

| --browser-mode | auto | auto, always, never — see the headless-fallback skill. |

| --browser-endpoint | — | External CDP ws:// URL. |

| --config | — | Inline JSON or @file.json for the full CrawlConfig. |

map takes a single seed URL positionally. There is no --depth or

--max-pages here — those bound a crawl, not a map. Scope is the seed host's

sitemaps plus links found on the seed page; bound the result with --limit and

narrow it with --search.

How discovery works

1. Fetch and parse sitemap.xml, following nested <sitemapindex> entries.
2. If no sitemap (or a thin one), extract links from the seed page's HTML.
3. Apply the --search substring filter (case-insensitive), then --limit.

No page bodies are rendered, so a map of hundreds of URLs returns in seconds —

far cheaper than crawling. In --browser-mode auto the seed fetch still falls

back to headless Chrome if the seed page is a JS shell that hides its links;

pass --browser-mode never to keep it static-only.

Output

Markdown mode

https://example.com/
https://example.com/docs/
https://example.com/docs/getting-started
https://example.com/blog/post-one

JSON mode

Top-level MapResult with a urls array; each entry carries the discovered

url. Read result.urls[i].url for each string when scripting.

kreuzcrawl map https://example.com --format json | jq -r '.urls[].url'

Common patterns

Discover then crawl a subsection

kreuzcrawl map https://example.com --search /docs/ --format markdown > urls.txt

Feed the filtered list into a bounded crawl, or scrape individual entries.

Audit a third-party site politely

kreuzcrawl map https://unknown.example --respect-robots-txt --limit 200

When to reach for crawl instead

If the user needs the page content (Markdown, metadata, tables) rather than

just the URL list, use kreuzcrawl crawl — see the crawling-a-site skill.

Reach for map first when the goal is enumeration, planning, or seeding.