The audit command crawls a website and runs SEO rules to generate a report.
Usage
squirrel audit <url> [options]
Arguments
| Argument | Description |
|---|
url | The URL to audit (required) |
Options
| Option | Alias | Description | Default |
|---|
--max-pages | -m | Maximum pages to crawl | varies by coverage mode |
--coverage | -C | Coverage mode: quick, surface, full | surface |
--format | -f | Output format: console, text, json, html, markdown, xml, llm | console |
--output | -o | Output file path | auto |
--refresh | -r | Ignore cache, fetch all pages fresh | false |
--resume | | Resume interrupted crawl for this domain | false |
--verbose | -v | Verbose output | false |
--debug | | Enable debug logging | false |
--trace | | Enable performance tracing | false |
--project-name | -n | Project name (overrides config and prompts) | auto |
--publish | -p | Publish report to reports.squirrelscan.com | false |
--visibility | | Visibility: public, unlisted, private | public |
Coverage Modes
| Mode | Default Pages | Description |
|---|
quick | 25 | Fast scan - seed URL + sitemaps only, no link discovery |
surface | 100 | Smart sampling - one page per URL pattern (default) |
full | 500 | Comprehensive - crawl everything up to limit |
For SARIF format (IDE integration), use the report command after running an audit:squirrel audit https://example.com
squirrel report <audit-id> --format sarif
Examples
Basic Audit
squirrel audit https://example.com
Quick Health Check
squirrel audit https://example.com -C quick
Full Comprehensive Audit
squirrel audit https://example.com -C full
Crawl More Pages
squirrel audit https://example.com -m 200
Export to JSON
squirrel audit https://example.com -f json -o report.json
Generate HTML Report
squirrel audit https://example.com -f html -o report.html
Fresh Crawl (Ignore Cache)
squirrel audit https://example.com --refresh
Audit and Publish
squirrel audit https://example.com --publish
squirrel audit https://example.com --publish --visibility unlisted
Publishing requires authentication. Run squirrel auth login first.
Verbose Output
squirrel audit https://example.com -v
Console (default)
Human-readable output with colored issue severity:
squirrelscan v0.1.0
========================================
Auditing: https://example.com
Max pages: 500
Crawled 12 pages
ISSUES
[high] Missing meta description
→ /about
→ /contact
[medium] Image missing alt text
→ /images/hero.png on /
[low] Non-HTTPS link
→ http://oldsite.com on /links
JSON
Machine-readable JSON for CI/CD pipelines and AI processing:
squirrel audit https://example.com -f json -o report.json
{
"url": "https://example.com",
"crawledAt": "2025-01-08T00:00:00Z",
"pages": [...],
"issues": [...],
"stats": {
"totalPages": 12,
"issueCount": { "high": 2, "medium": 3, "low": 5 }
}
}
HTML
Visual report you can open in a browser:
squirrel audit https://example.com -f html -o report.html
open report.html
Crawl Behavior
The audit command manages crawl sessions intelligently:
| Scenario | Behavior |
|---|
| First run | Creates new crawl |
| Re-run (completed) | New crawl, uses cache for 304s |
| Re-run (interrupted) | Resumes from where it left off |
| Config changed | New crawl with fresh scope |
Changing scope-affecting config (include, exclude, allow_query_params, drop_query_prefixes) triggers a fresh crawl.
Caching
SquirrelScan caches page content locally. On subsequent audits:
- 304 Not Modified: Uses cached content (fast)
- 200 OK: Fetches fresh content (slower)
Use --refresh to bypass the cache entirely.
Exit Codes
| Code | Meaning |
|---|
0 | Success |
1 | Error (invalid URL, crawl failed, etc.) |
Configuration
The audit command respects settings from squirrel.toml:
[crawler]
max_pages = 100
delay_ms = 200
timeout_ms = 30000
include = ["/blog/*"]
exclude = ["/admin/*"]
[rules]
enable = ["*"]
disable = ["ai/*"]
Using with AI
Pipe JSON output to your LLM:
squirrel audit https://example.com -f json | claude "analyze this SEO report"
