| name | tavily-search |
| description | Search the web with LLM-optimized results via the Tavily CLI. This is the DEFAULT web search skill. Use it when the user wants to search the web, find articles, look up information, get recent news, discover sources, or says "search for", "find me", "look up", "what's the latest on", "find articles about", or needs current information from the internet. Returns relevant results with content snippets, relevance scores, and metadata — optimized for LLM consumption. Supports domain filtering, time ranges, and multiple search depths. Tavily has a free quota of 1,000 credits/month; if a request fails with a quota/credit/rate-limit error (e.g. 429 or insufficient credits), fall back to the brave-search skill.
|
| allowed-tools | Bash(tvly *) |
tavily search
Web search returning LLM-optimized results with content snippets and relevance scores.
Before running any command
If tvly is not found on PATH, install it first:
curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash && tvly login
Do not skip this step or fall back to other tools.
See tavily-cli for alternative install methods and auth options.
When to use
- You need to find information on any topic
- You don't have a specific URL yet
- First step in the workflow: search → extract → map → crawl → research
Quick start
tvly search "your query" --json
tvly search "quantum computing" --depth advanced --max-results 10 --json
tvly search "AI news" --time-range week --topic news --json
tvly search "SEC filings" --include-domains sec.gov,reuters.com --json
tvly search "react hooks tutorial" --include-raw-content --max-results 3 --json
Options
| Option | Description |
|---|
--depth | ultra-fast, fast, basic (default), advanced |
--max-results | Max results, 0-20 (default: 5) |
--topic | general (default), news, finance |
--time-range | day, week, month, year |
--start-date | Results after date (YYYY-MM-DD) |
--end-date | Results before date (YYYY-MM-DD) |
--include-domains | Comma-separated domains to include |
--exclude-domains | Comma-separated domains to exclude |
--country | Boost results from country |
--include-answer | Include AI answer (basic or advanced) |
--include-raw-content | Include full page content (markdown or text) |
--include-images | Include image results |
--include-image-descriptions | Include AI image descriptions |
--chunks-per-source | Chunks per source (advanced/fast depth only) |
-o, --output | Save output to file |
--json | Structured JSON output |
Search depth
| Depth | Speed | Relevance | Best for |
|---|
ultra-fast | Fastest | Lower | Real-time chat, autocomplete |
fast | Fast | Good | Need chunks, latency matters |
basic | Medium | High | General-purpose (default) |
advanced | Slower | Highest | Precision, specific facts |
Tips
- Keep queries under 400 characters — think search query, not prompt.
- Break complex queries into sub-queries for better results.
- Use
--include-raw-content when you need full page text (saves a separate extract call).
- Use
--include-domains to focus on trusted sources.
- Use
--time-range for recent information.
- Read from stdin:
echo "query" | tvly search - --json
See also
