tavily-cli
Installation
Summary
Web search, content extraction, site crawling, and deep research via Tavily CLI.
- Five command modes covering search, extraction, URL discovery, bulk crawling, and multi-source research with citations
- All commands support JSON output and file saving for structured, agentic workflows
- Escalation pattern guides you from simple search through extraction, mapping, crawling, to comprehensive research based on your needs
- Requires tavily-cli installation and API key authentication via
tvly login
SKILL.md
Tavily CLI
Web search, content extraction, site crawling, URL discovery, and deep research. Returns JSON optimized for LLM consumption.
Run tvly --help or tvly <command> --help for full option details.
Prerequisites
Must be installed and authenticated. Check with tvly --status.
tavily v0.1.0
> Authenticated via OAuth (tvly login)
If not ready:
curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash
Or manually: uv tool install tavily-cli / pip install tavily-cli
Then authenticate:
tvly login --api-key tvly-YOUR_KEY
# or: export TAVILY_API_KEY=tvly-YOUR_KEY
# or: tvly login (opens browser for OAuth)
Workflow
Follow this escalation pattern — start simple, escalate when needed:
- Search — No specific URL. Find pages, answer questions, discover sources.
- Extract — Have a URL. Pull its content directly.
- Map — Large site, need to find the right page. Discover URLs first.
- Crawl — Need bulk content from an entire site section.
- 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.
Output
All commands support --json for structured, machine-readable output and -o to save to a file.
tvly search "react hooks" --json -o results.json
tvly extract "https://example.com/docs" -o docs.md
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --output-dir ./docs/
Tips
- Always quote URLs — shell interprets
?and&as special characters. - Use
--jsonfor agentic workflows — every command supports it. - Read from stdin with
-—echo "query" | tvly search - - Exit codes: 0 = success, 2 = bad input, 3 = auth error, 4 = API error.