The Follow links block is a fundamental navigation tool that tells the AI agent to visit a URL or a list of URLs. Finding links with a block like Find Links is not enough; you must use this block immediately after to explicitly instruct the agent to go to those links. This block acts as the bridge between finding a path and actually walking down it.

Purpose

Use the Follow links on a page block to:
  • Navigate to a list of URLs found by the Find Links block.
  • Open a URL that has been extracted as a variable by an Extract Data block.
  • Systematically visit a series of pages to perform an action or extract data from each one.

Configuration

Configuration is centered around telling the agent which links from the incoming list it should visit. This is a dropdown menu that controls the navigation behavior.
  • Follow the First link: The agent will only navigate to the very first URL from the list provided by the previous step.
  • Follow each link: The agent will iterate through the entire list of URLs, executing all subsequent blocks for each link. This is the most common option for scraping multiple pages.
  • Follow links that have not been seen before: A powerful option for monitoring workflows. The agent will keep a memory of links it has visited in previous runs and only follow links it has never seen before, preventing duplicate processing.
  • url_strings: Allows you to manually provide a URL or, more commonly, use a variable {{variable_name}} that contains a URL.
Follow Links block UI

The Follow links block configuration panel.

Common Workflow Patterns

This block is almost always used in one of two patterns. This is the standard way to scrape a list of items.
  1. Find Links: You first use Find Links to identify all the relevant <a> tag links on a page (e.g., all product links from a category page).
  2. Follow links: You immediately add this block next. By selecting Follow each link, you tell the agent to visit every single URL that was just found.
  3. Extract Data: After this, you add an Extract Data block to scrape information from each of the detail pages the agent visits.

Pattern 2: After Extract Data

This pattern is used when the URL you want to visit is not a direct <a> tag but is extracted as text from the page.
  1. Extract Data: Your first extraction step scrapes a piece of data and saves it to a variable with the specific key URL.
  2. Follow links: You add this block next. The agent will recognize the URL key from the previous step and navigate to the link contained in its value.

Key Considerations

  • Mandatory Preceding Block: This block is not a starting point. It must follow a block that provides it with a URL or a list of URLs, typically Find Links or Extract Data.
  • Iteration: When Follow each link is selected, it creates a loop. All subsequent blocks will be executed for every single link in the list.
  • De-duplication: The Follow links that have not been seen before option is extremely useful for building monitoring automations that run on a schedule and should only process new content.
The Follow links block is the essential engine for moving your agent from a list of possibilities to the actual pages you want to work on.