tavily-research

Ask one big question and wait a minute or two: it reads its way across many sites and comes back with a written report, a source shown for every claim.

WHEN TO USE

SCOPE

USE FOR

Get a cited market analysis or competitive-landscape report on a topic.
Compare several products, technologies, or approaches with sourced evidence.
Produce a literature review or trend report grounded in web citations.
Generate a research report as structured JSON matching a custom schema.

NOT FOR

Answer a quick factual question — use the search skill for fast lookups instead.

This is a saved copy of the skill's SKILL.md instructions. It may differ from the upstream file or the version you install.

In this document (9)

tavily research

AI-powered deep research that gathers sources, analyzes them, and produces a cited report. Takes 30-120 seconds.

Before running

Research requires authentication. Run the requested command directly when tvly is already authenticated; do not add a status check to every invocation.

If tvly is missing, follow the tavily-cli setup. If an installed CLI reports an authentication error, use tvly login for authentication only, or tvly init --skip-skills when guided verification is also useful. Browser-based OAuth is preferred when an interactive user can complete it. --no-browser prints the sign-in link instead of opening it, but still waits for a localhost callback. In an unattended agent or CI environment, leave authentication to the user or use a securely provided TAVILY_API_KEY. Do not start a second login immediately after guided setup has completed.

When to use

You need comprehensive, multi-source analysis
The user wants a comparison, market report, or literature review
Quick searches aren't enough — you need synthesis with citations
Step 5 in the workflow: search → extract → map → crawl → research

Quick start

# Basic research (waits for completion)
tvly research "competitive landscape of AI code assistants"

# Pro model for comprehensive analysis
tvly research "electric vehicle market analysis" --model pro

# Stream results in real-time
tvly research "AI agent frameworks comparison" --stream

# Save report to file
tvly research "fintech trends 2025" --model pro -o fintech-report.json

# JSON output for agents
tvly research "quantum computing breakthroughs" --json

Options

Option	Description
`--model`	`mini`, `pro`, or `auto` (default)
`--stream`	Stream results in real-time
`--no-wait`	Return request_id immediately (async)
`--output-schema`	Path to JSON schema for structured output
`--citation-format`	`numbered`, `mla`, `apa`, `chicago`
`--poll-interval`	Seconds between checks (default: 10)
`--timeout`	Max wait seconds (default: 600)
`-o, --output`	Save the JSON response to a file
`--json`	Structured JSON output

Model selection

Model	Use for	Speed
`mini`	Single-topic, targeted research	~30s
`pro`	Comprehensive multi-angle analysis	~60-120s
`auto`	API chooses based on complexity	Varies

Rule of thumb: "What does X do?" → mini. "X vs Y vs Z" or "best way to..." → pro.

Async workflow

For long-running research, you can start and poll separately:

# Start without waiting
tvly research "topic" --no-wait --json    # returns request_id

# Check status
tvly research status <request_id> --json

# Wait for completion
tvly research poll <request_id> --json -o result.json

Tips

Research takes 30-120 seconds — use --stream to see progress in real-time.
Use --model pro for complex comparisons or multi-faceted topics.
Use --output-schema to get structured JSON output matching a custom schema.
For quick facts, use tvly search instead — research is for deep synthesis.
Read from stdin: echo "query" | tvly research - --json

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npx skills add tavily-ai/skills --skill tavily-research tavily-cli tavily-crawl tavily-extract tavily-map tavily-search --full-depth

It installs 6 skills: this one and the 5 it relies on, listed below. Once these skills are installed where Claude Code loads them, their descriptions help Claude decide when to use them.

What's inside

Files included with this skill.

View on GitHub

Same repository

tavily-best-practices
Build production-ready Tavily integrations with best practices baked in. Reference documentation for developers using coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) to implement web search, content extraction, crawling, and research in agentic workflows, RAG systems, or autonomous agents.Read full description
tavily-cli
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.Read full description
tavily-crawl
Crawl websites and extract content from multiple pages via the Tavily CLI. Use this skill when the user wants to crawl a site, download documentation, extract an entire docs section, bulk-extract pages, save a site as local markdown files, or says "crawl", "get all the pages", "download the docs", "extract everything under /docs", "bulk extract", or needs content from many pages on the same domain. Supports depth/breadth control, path filtering, semantic instructions, and saving each page as a local markdown file.Read full description
tavily-dynamic-search
Programmatic Tavily search with context isolation. Use when web search or extraction will return large results that need filtering, deduplication, or multi-step triage before they enter the model context. Use tavily-search for ordinary lookups and tavily-research for end-to-end cited synthesis.Read full description
tavily-extract
Extract clean markdown or text content from specific URLs via the Tavily CLI. Use this skill when the user has one or more URLs and wants their content, says "extract", "grab the content from", "pull the text from", "get the page at", "read this webpage", or needs clean text from web pages. Handles JavaScript-rendered pages, returns LLM-optimized markdown, and supports query-focused chunking for targeted extraction. Can process up to 20 URLs in a single call.Read full description
tavily-map
Discover and list all URLs on a website without extracting content, via the Tavily CLI. Use this skill when the user wants to find a specific page on a large site, list all URLs, see the site structure, find where something is on a domain, or says "map the site", "find the URL for", "what pages are on", "list all pages", or "site structure". Faster than crawling — returns URLs only. Essential when you know the site but not the exact page. Combine with extract for targeted content retrieval.Read full description

tavily research

Before running

When to use

Quick start

Options

Model selection

Async workflow

Tips

See also

Account or credentials required

What's inside

tavily-research

tavily research

Before running

When to use

Quick start

Options

Model selection

Async workflow

Tips

See also

Account or credentials required

What's inside

More skills

MCP keyword matches