tavily-search

Searches the web and hands the results back in a form an AI assistant can read straight away — links, extracts, and a score for how well each one fits.

WHEN TO USE

SCOPE

USE FOR

Find current articles, news, or sources on any topic without a URL in hand.
Restrict results to a set of trusted domains or a recent time window.
Pull full page text alongside search results in a single call.
Get an AI-generated answer summary along with the underlying sources.

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 (8)

tavily search

Web search returning LLM-optimized results with content snippets and relevance scores.

Before running

Run search directly when tvly is available. Search supports capped keyless access, so do not look for an API key or authenticate before the first request.

If tvly is missing, follow the tavily-cli setup before retrying. If the keyless cap is reached in an interactive session, run tvly login to open browser OAuth, then retry the original search once. In an unattended environment, report the cap and authentication options instead of starting an interactive flow. Do not start a second login immediately after guided setup has completed.

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

# Basic search
tvly search "your query" --json

# Advanced search with more results
tvly search "quantum computing" --depth advanced --max-results 10 --json

# Recent news
tvly search "AI news" --time-range week --topic news --json

# Domain-filtered
tvly search "SEC filings" --include-domains sec.gov,reuters.com --json

# Include full page content in results
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 the JSON response to a 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.
Verify identity-sensitive facts at the exact primary source. For releases, versions, ownership, or similarly named projects, confirm the official repository or domain instead of trusting a generated answer or package-name match alone.
Read from stdin: echo "query" | tvly search - --json

Check selected tools if a picker appears; Claude Code may be unchecked under Additional agents. ↑/↓ moves, Space toggles selections, Enter confirms.
Without a tool picker, check Installing to: for your intended tool. Stop if it names a different tool.
If asked, choose Symlink (Recommended) for shared files or Copy to all agents for separate copies; review the summary before confirming installation.
Install the find-skills skill? defaults to Yes, adding another skill for all projects. Choose No if you don't want that extra installation.

Skills CLI 1.7.2 sends install data to skills.sh by default, including the source, skill names, target tools and file details; GitHub sources are reported only when GitHub confirms the repository is public, while other remote sources can also be reported. Confirmed-public GitHub sources also trigger a security-audit request. Before installing, set the environment variable DO_NOT_TRACK=1 or DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 to disable both.

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

Before running

When to use

Quick start

Options

Search depth

Tips

See also

Local tool required

What's inside

tavily-search

tavily search

Before running

When to use

Quick start

Options

Search depth

Tips

See also

Local tool required

What's inside

More skills

MCP keyword matches