How to Build a SEO Sitemap Extractor Tool using AI and Cursor

If you've ever manually clicked through a sitemap.xml file trying to pull URLs one by one, you know how much time it wastes. In this build, I put together a fully working sitemap extractor tool using Cursor AI and Python — no prior coding experience required. By the end, you'll have a real GUI-based tool that pulls every URL from a site's sitemap in seconds, and you'll understand exactly how it works under the hood.

What This Tool Does

The sitemap extractor grabs every URL from a website's sitemap and lays it out for you instantly — no digging through raw XML, no manual copy-pasting. It handles the common sitemap variations you'll run into in the wild, including sitemap.xml, sitemap_index.xml, and other structures. It can also tell you whether a site is running WordPress with Yoast SEO or built as a standard HTML site, just based on how the sitemap is structured.

Why This Matters for SEO Work

Sitemap extraction shows up constantly in technical SEO: audits, site migrations, content inventories, competitive research — the list goes on. Most people either do this by hand or pay for a tool that does one thing and nothing else. Building your own version means it's shaped around your actual workflow, and you can keep adding to it as new needs come up. That's the real win here — not just the tool itself, but the skill of building and extending your own tools on demand.

How the Build Works

We start with the basics: setting up the project folder correctly. It's a small step, but skipping it is one of the most common ways these builds get messy later. From there, it's about learning how to prompt Cursor effectively so it generates a tool that actually does what you need — including a proper GUI, so you're not stuck running everything from a command prompt.

Once the core tool is working, we test it against real websites and confirm it correctly handles different sitemap formats and site types.

Advanced Customization

After the base version is solid, I walk through a more advanced take on the tool — one that splits sitemap URLs by location or service. If you're dealing with a multi-location business or a service-area site with a sitemap containing 20+ locations, this feature sorts everything by city or keyword automatically instead of forcing you to scroll and sort by hand.

We also add CSV export, complete with domain names and timestamps, so results are easy to organize, compare over time, or hand off when managing multiple client sites.

Packaging It as a Standalone App

The last piece is turning your Python script into a standalone .exe file. This means anyone can run the tool on a Windows machine without installing Python or any dependencies. I also cover how to set up over-the-air updates, so the tool can stay current without requiring a fresh download every time something changes.

Key Takeaways

• Extracts URLs from multiple sitemap formats, including sitemap_index.xml
• Detects WordPress/Yoast sitemaps vs. standard HTML sitemap structures
• Sorts URLs by location or service for multi-location sites
• Exports clean CSV files with domain and timestamp data
• Packages into a standalone .exe — no Python install required to run it
• Supports over-the-air updates for ongoing use

For the full walkthrough — including the exact prompts used in Cursor and a look at the tool running against real sitemaps — check out the video. Watching the build happen step by step will make it much easier to replicate or customize for your own needs.

A free download of the finished tool is available right here on this page. If you're building out your own SEO or automation toolkit, subscribe to Casey Builds It so you don't miss the next build — and drop a comment if there's a tool you'd like to see made next.