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Using a specific coding agent? See Zyte Coding Agent Add-Ons for alternatives.
Install
This is an agent plugin: a portable, vendor-neutral package of skills that any agent implementing the standard can load. Install it however your agent installs plugins, or use the skills CLI, which sets it up for every supported agent on your system at once:
npx skills add zytedata/skills
See skills.sh for the list of agents it supports and how to enable skills in each.
Any agent that reads agent plugins or Agent Skills can use this plugin, including editors such as Cursor. For Claude Code, Codex CLI and GitHub Copilot CLI we publish dedicated packages tuned to each of them; prefer those if you use one.
What it does
This is Zyte's official agent plugin that generates production-ready Scrapy spiders with web-poet page objects from a plain-English prompt. Give it a URL and describe what you want to extract. It handles site exploration, schema discovery, code generation, and smoke testing: no boilerplate, no manual selector hunting.
The plugin explores the target site, discovers available fields, and presents a schema for your approval before generating a single line of code. After you confirm the schema, it creates a Scrapy project with all dependencies configured, generates web-poet page objects and test fixtures, wires up the spider, and runs a smoke test to verify that extraction is working before handing the project back to you.
Optionally, use /zyte to deploy directly to Scrapy Cloud for scheduled runs, job history, and monitoring. A free tier is available.
Use cases
The /scrape skill works on any website with repeating structured content: detail pages linked from a listing or category page. Examples from the skill:
- Product catalogs
- Job listings
- Recipes
How does it work?
The /scrape skill orchestrates two stages automatically:
1. Plan and validate the scrape → /scrape-plan
2. Build the project and spider → /scrapy-extra
Each stage feeds directly into the next. When the pipeline completes, you have a runnable spider and a passing test suite:
uv run scrapy crawl <spider_name>
uv run pytest fixtures/
Skills
Orchestration
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape | End-to-end web scraping workflow — from URL to working spider with web-poet page objects |
Pipeline stages (called automatically by /scrape)
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape-plan | Plan the scrape and author a validated extraction spec: discover fields, download diverse pages, compare HTML variants, optional browser review |
scrape-analyze-page | Extract all available fields with values from a detail page |
scrapy-extra | Hands-on Scrapy coding: write/debug spiders, web-poet page objects, and projects; configure scrapy-poet and scrapy-zyte-api |
Zyte APIs
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
zyte | Interact with Zyte's APIs and cloud services: set up your Zyte account and credentials; deploy projects, schedule spiders, list/stop jobs, and view items or logs on Scrapy Cloud; query historical Zyte API usage stats; look up Zyte API pricing and per-website costs; and answer how-to and documentation questions about Zyte from the official docs |
Prerequisites
- An AI coding agent that supports agent plugins or Agent Skills
uv— used to create and manage the Scrapy project
Project dependencies (scrapy, scrapy-poet, scrapy-zyte-api, web-poet, extruct, price-parser, pytest) are installed automatically by the skills.
Quickstart
Any scraping prompt triggers the skill automatically. For example:
Scrape books.toscrape.com
The plugin walks you through schema approval interactively, then generates a complete, tested Scrapy project.
Update
To update:
npx skills update zytedata/skills
Evaluation
We automatically evaluate skills and track both wall time and cost. We measure and aim to improve these metrics over time.
Feedback
If you find any issue — such as prompts that did not work as expected, or that caused excessive wall time or cost — please open a GitHub issue.
Provide as much detail as possible to help us reproduce the issue. You are welcome to anonymize target websites or other data.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Zyte account required?
No. The generated spider is a standard Scrapy project that runs locally with uv. A Zyte account is required only if you want to deploy to Scrapy Cloud or use Zyte API to access sites that block standard scrapers. If you want to use Zyte API, you'll need an account to generate an API key.
Does it handle JavaScript-rendered pages?
The generated project includes scrapy-zyte-api as a dependency. Enabling headless browser rendering requires a Zyte API key. The /zyte skill guides you through setting up your credentials.
What Python libraries does the generated project use?
The project template includes scrapy, scrapy-poet, scrapy-zyte-api, web-poet, extruct, price-parser, and pytest. All dependencies are installed automatically via uv sync.
Can the generated spider run without my AI coding agent?
Yes. The plugin generates a standard Scrapy project. Run it directly with:
uv run scrapy crawl <spider_name>
You can extend, modify, and deploy it independently of your AI coding agent.
License
See LICENSE.md for the Zyte End User License Agreement.