Firecrawl retires legacy GitHub search interface; agent tools must migrate to Developer Index

Firecrawl’s GitHub search interface is entering a migration phase. Official documentation marks GitHub search under the research index as removed on November 3, 2026: GET /v2/search/research/github and the legacy alias GET /v2/research/github return 410 Gone. Callers should forward their existing query and k parameters to /v2/search/developer, which supports GET and POST. This directly affects retrieval workflows that coding agents use to find issues, fix records, and package usage. Official documentation

The removal design also clearly distinguishes this error from others. The related PR places 410 handling before authentication, rate-limit, and quota checks. The response includes ENDPOINT_REMOVED, a replacement path, and a documentation link, and is not billed. For agent runners, this means updating tool configuration; treating the response as a temporary failure and repeatedly retrying will not restore search. Endpoint removal proposal

Another change concerns the github category in /v2/search. It previously added only a site:github.com domain filter; the removal plan returns an explicit 400 to requests that still pass this category. For Developer Index access, use developer. For GitHub web results only, use includeDomains: ["github.com"]; the two options have different retrieval scopes. Category change proposal

Result parsing also needs updates. The dedicated Developer Index endpoint returns a stable id and matching passages, replacing the legacy interface’s snippet; document results may have no title. When using the developer category through general search, results appear in the web group, and that category cannot be combined with others. Engineering teams should choose an endpoint based on whether they need passages and index filters, and review assumptions about existing fields. Response format and limitations

The main-branch commit list now includes the November 3 removal and subsequent fixes, but the PR pages checked still show as open, so public pages differ in status. This article did not test the hosted API or verify the corresponding SDK release. Before deployment, confirm actual service responses, package versions, and parsing compatibility. Commit history