name: tavily-search description: | Search the web with LLM-optimized results via the Tavily CLI. Use this skill 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. 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
# 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 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-contentwhen you need full page text (saves a separate extract call). - Use
--include-domainsto focus on trusted sources. - Use
--time-rangefor recent information. - Read from stdin:
echo "query" | tvly search - --json
See also
- tavily-extract — extract content from specific URLs
- tavily-research — comprehensive multi-source research