From a plain-English prompt to a working Scrapy spider.
Not using exclusively Codex CLI? See Zyte Coding Agent Add-Ons for alternatives.
codex plugin marketplace add zytedata/codex-skills
codex plugin add zyte-web-data@zyte-aiIf Codex CLI is already running, restart the active session to load the plugin.
This is Zyte's official Codex CLI 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 /scrape-scrapy-cloud to deploy directly to Scrapy Cloud for scheduled runs, job history, and monitoring. A free tier is available.
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
The /scrape skill orchestrates five stages automatically:
1. Decide which fields to extract → /scrape-define
2. Analyze the website → /scrape-spec
3. Create the Scrapy project → /scrape-ensure-project
4. Generate the extraction code → /scrape-codegen
5. Generate the spider → /scrape-create-spider
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/| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape |
End-to-end web scraping workflow — from URL to working spider with web-poet page objects |
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape-define |
Quick schema definition: explore one detail page, discover fields, fast approval loop |
scrape-spec |
Explore diverse pages and validate the extraction spec: downloads pages, compares variants, optional browser review |
scrape-explore-site |
Explore a website to find and save diverse pages (start, list, detail) with classified links |
scrape-analyze-page |
Extract all available fields with values from a detail page |
scrape-ensure-project |
Ensure a Scrapy project exists with scrapy-poet and Zyte API support |
scrape-codegen |
Generate web-poet page object code from an extraction spec |
scrape-codegen-analyze |
Analyze an HTML page to produce field extraction instructions for code generation |
scrape-codegen-generate |
Generate web-poet page object code from per-page extraction analyses |
scrape-create-spider |
Generate a Scrapy spider that wires page objects together |
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape-add-page-object |
Add an empty web-poet page object to a Scrapy project |
scrape-review-schema |
Generate an HTML review page for schema and extracted data verification |
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
scrape-scrapy-cloud |
Deploy projects, schedule spiders, list/stop jobs, and view items or logs on Scrapy Cloud |
scrape-zyte-login |
Set up your Zyte account and credentials |
Project dependencies (scrapy, scrapy-poet, scrapy-zyte-api, web-poet, extruct, price-parser, pytest) are installed automatically by the skills.
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.
To update manually, refresh the marketplace snapshot and reinstall the plugin:
codex plugin marketplace upgrade
codex plugin add zyte-web-data@zyte-aiThen restart the Codex CLI session.
We automatically evaluate skills and track both wall time and cost. We measure and aim to improve these metrics over time.
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.
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.
The generated project includes scrapy-zyte-api as a dependency. Enabling headless browser rendering requires a Zyte API key. The /scrape-zyte-login skill guides you through setting up your credentials.
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.
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 Codex CLI.
See LICENSE.md for the Zyte End User License Agreement.