> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.fetchfox.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Set the starting URLs

> You can tell FetchFox which URLs to start from

When you crawl for URLs [using a pattern](/crawl-using-patterns), FetchFox needs a set of URLs to start at. Those URLs can be set in one of two ways:

* **Automatic:** You can let FetchFox determine the starting URLs for you.
* **Explicit:** You can tell FetchFox which URLs to start crawling from.

Let's look at both of these options.

## Automatically determine the starting URLs

If you do not pass `startUrls`, FetchFox generates a small seed set from your `pattern`:

* The origin (for example `https://example.com`)
* Path prefixes derived from your pattern

## Explicitly setting the starting URLs

Use `startUrls` to explicitly define the seed URLs for a crawl.

Setting `startUrls` is helpful for crawling specific parts of a large site. It is especially useful with `maxDepth`, which limits the [maximum depth of a crawl](/limiting-crawls).

For example, suppose you are scraping commits on specific repos on GitHub. You can pass target repos in `startUrls`, then set `maxDepth: 0`.

<CodeGroup>
  ```bash curl theme={null}
  curl -X POST https://api.fetchfox.ai/api/crawl \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FETCHFOX_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
      "pattern":"https://github.com/*/commit/*",
      "startUrls": [
        "https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits/master/",
        "https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master/"
      ],
      "maxDepth": 0,
      "maxVisits": 50
  }'
  ```
</CodeGroup>

The call above will find commit URLs for the target repos, without wasting time on irrelevant parts of the site.