Web Research Workflow

Unified approach for web content research that automatically selects the right tool for each situation.

Quick Decision Tree

URL to research
     │
     ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ 1. Try WebFetch │ ← Fast, free, no overhead
│    (always try) │
└─────────────────┘
     │
Content OK? ──Yes──► Parse and return
     │
     No (empty/partial/<500 chars)
     │
     ▼
┌───────────────────────┐
│ 2. TAVILY_API_KEY set?│
└───────────────────────┘
     │          │
    Yes         No ──► Skip to step 3
     │
     ▼
┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Tavily search/extract/    │ ← Raw markdown, batch URLs
│ crawl/research            │
└───────────────────────────┘
     │
Content OK? ──Yes──► Parse and return
     │
     No (JS-rendered/auth-required)
     │
     ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│ 3. Use agent-browser │ ← Full browser, last resort
└─────────────────────┘
     │
├─ SPA (react/vue/angular) ──► wait --load networkidle
├─ Login required ──► auth flow + state save
├─ Dynamic content ──► wait --text "Expected"
└─ Multi-page ──► crawl pattern

Tavily Enhanced Research

When TAVILY_API_KEY is set, Tavily provides a powerful middle tier between WebFetch and agent-browser. It returns raw markdown content, supports batch URL extraction, and offers semantic search with relevance scoring. If TAVILY_API_KEY is not set, the 3-tier tree collapses to 2-tier (WebFetch → agent-browser) automatically.

See Tool Selection for when-to-use-what tables, escalation heuristics, SPA detection patterns, and cost awareness.

See Tavily API Reference for Search, Extract, Map, Crawl, and Research endpoint examples and options.

Browser Patterns

For content requiring JavaScript rendering, authentication, or multi-page crawling, fall back to agent-browser.

See Browser Patterns for auto-fallback, authentication flow, multi-page research patterns, best practices, and troubleshooting.

Competitive Monitoring

Track competitor websites for changes in pricing, features, positioning, and content.

See Competitor Page Monitoring for snapshot capture, structured data extraction, and change classification.

See Change Detection & Discovery for diff detection, structured comparison, Tavily site discovery, and CI automation.

Change Classification

Severity	Examples	Action
Critical	Price increase/decrease, major feature change	Immediate alert
High	New feature added, feature removed	Review required
Medium	Copy changes, positioning shift	Note for analysis
Low	Typos, minor styling	Log only

Integration with Agents

This skill is used by:

web-research-analyst - Primary user
market-intelligence - Competitor research
product-strategist - Deep competitive analysis
ux-researcher - Design system capture
documentation-specialist - API doc extraction

Related Skills

browser-content-capture - Detailed browser patterns
agent-browser - CLI reference

Version: 1.3.0 (February 2026)

web-research-workflow