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Scout · Recipe

First verification

One realistic path: discover URLs on a site, extract a field from each page, then verify a critical element is visible — using crawl, jobs, extract, and visibility together.

What you need
A Scout API key from app.scout.macrocontent.dev → API keys and enough credits (Free tier is enough for a small run). No domain verify for this read-only path.

  1. Crawl the site (link discovery)

    Call POST /v1/crawl to get discovered_urls[] — not page HTML.

    json
    {
  "start_url": "https://example.com",
  "max_depth": 1,
  "max_pages": 10,
  "same_origin": true,
  "seed_from_sitemap": true
}

    Keep max_pages small while learning (credits = 15 + 2×max_pages).

  2. Batch extract with a job

    Take a few URLs from the crawl and enqueue POST /v1/jobs with type: "extract" (or save selectors as a template).

    json
    {
  "requests": [
    {
      "type": "extract",
      "body": {
        "url": "https://example.com/pricing",
        "fields": [{ "name": "h1", "selector": "h1", "type": "text" }]
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "extract",
      "body": {
        "url": "https://example.com/about",
        "fields": [{ "name": "h1", "selector": "h1", "type": "text" }]
      }
    }
  ]
}

    Poll GET /v1/jobs/:id until completed. Results expire (~30 min) — persist what you need.

  3. Verify a critical element is visible

    For your money-page URL, call POST /v1/checks/visibility — Scout’s occlusion-aware check.

    json
    {
  "url": "https://example.com/pricing",
  "selector": "a[href*='signup']",
  "scroll_into_view": true
}

    You want overall_pass: true, visible: true, and not_covered: true. If overlap_detected_by is set, something sits on top of the element.

  4. Optional: screenshot evidence

    Attach a screenshot/json shot of the same URL for humans/auditors. Decode image_base64 to a file.

When to switch to a journey

If the element only appears after login or a click path, use a journey (shared browser state) instead of separate extract calls — and verify the domain before interact.