tavily-cli

name	tavily-cli
description	Set up, authenticate, update, troubleshoot, or choose between Tavily CLI web commands. Use when the user asks about the Tavily CLI, installing Tavily skills, first-time setup, authentication, keyless limits, CLI updates, or which Tavily command to use. For an ordinary web task, use the specific search, extract, map, crawl, research, or dynamic-search skill instead.
allowed-tools	Bash(tvly *)

Tavily CLI

Web search, content extraction, site crawling, URL discovery, and deep research. Returns JSON optimized for LLM consumption.

Requires tavily-cli. Search and extract support capped keyless access; map, crawl, and research require authentication.

Run tvly --help or tvly <command> --help for full option details.

Setup

If tvly is not installed:

curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash

Or manually: uv tool install tavily-cli / pip install tavily-cli

For agent setup, start keyless unless the user asks to sign in or the requested task needs map, crawl, or research. If the installer did not already complete setup, run:

tvly init --skip-auth

This installs or updates the Tavily skills and verifies a live keyless search. Do not look for an API key or authenticate before the first search or extract request.

When authentication is requested or required, use guided setup:

tvly init

# Prefer to open the sign-in link yourself
tvly init --no-browser

tvly init reuses an existing credential, installs or updates the Tavily skills bundled with that CLI release, and verifies a live search. Run tvly update first when refreshing bundled skills. Use tvly init --skip-skills when the skills are already installed and only authentication or verification is needed.

Search and extract can run immediately without authentication, subject to a keyless rate-limit cap. If either command reaches that cap in an interactive session, run tvly login to open browser OAuth, then retry the original command once. In an unattended environment, report the cap and authentication options instead of starting an interactive flow. Map, crawl, and research require authentication. Check the current state only when needed with tvly --status --json.

For authentication without full setup, use tvly login, tvly login --no-browser, tvly login --api-key tvly-YOUR_KEY, or TAVILY_API_KEY.

Browser-based OAuth is the preferred interactive sign-in method. --no-browser simply prints the sign-in link instead of opening it automatically; the flow still returns to a localhost callback on the machine running tvly. In remote sessions, make sure that callback is reachable (SSH may require port forwarding). In an unattended agent or CI environment, leave authentication to the user or use a securely provided TAVILY_API_KEY, then resume the original command.

Keep an existing installation current with tvly update --check and tvly update.

Workflow

Follow this escalation pattern — start simple, escalate when needed:

1. Search — No specific URL. Find pages, answer questions, discover sources.
2. Extract — Have a URL. Pull its content directly.
3. Map — Large site, need to find the right page. Discover URLs first.
4. Crawl — Need bulk content from an entire site section.
5. Research — Need comprehensive, multi-source analysis with citations.

Need	Command	When
Find pages on a topic	tvly search	No specific URL yet
Get a page's content	tvly extract	Have a URL
Find URLs within a site	tvly map	Need to locate a specific subpage
Bulk extract a site section	tvly crawl	Need many pages (e.g., all /docs/)
Deep research with citations	tvly research	Need multi-source synthesis

For detailed command reference, use the individual skill for each command (e.g., tavily-search, tavily-crawl) or run tvly <command> --help.

Run tvly without a subcommand for the interactive REPL.

Output

Search, extract, crawl, map, and research support --json for structured output. Result-producing commands support -o to save the JSON response; crawl also supports --output-dir for one Markdown file per page. Setup, authentication, status, and update commands expose --json where documented but do not support -o.

tvly search "react hooks" --json -o results.json
tvly extract "https://example.com/docs" -o docs.json
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --output-dir ./docs/

Tips

• Always quote URLs — shell interprets ? and & as special characters.
• Use --json for agentic workflows when the selected command exposes it.
• Read from stdin with - — echo "query" | tvly search -
• Exit codes: 0 = success, 1 = setup/update failure, 2 = bad input, 3 = auth error, 4 = API or live-verification error.