Tavily Researcher

Web research via Tavily's LLM-optimized APIs: search, extract, sitemap, and research.

Setup

Requires TAVILY_API_KEY environment variable. Get a free key (1000 credits/month) at https://app.tavily.com

Choosing the Right Tool

Quick Start

Search

scripts/tavily_search.sh "What is retrieval augmented generation?" --include-answer

News Search

scripts/tavily_search.sh "AI regulation updates" --topic news --time-range week

Extract Content from URLs

scripts/tavily_extract.sh https://example.com/article1 https://example.com/article2

Discover URLs on a Site

scripts/tavily_sitemap.sh https://docs.example.com --max-depth 2 --limit 100

AI Research Report

scripts/tavily_research.sh "Compare LangGraph vs CrewAI for multi-agent systems" --model pro

Scripts

tavily_search.sh

Standard web search. Returns titles, URLs, snippets, and optional AI answer.

Key options:

• --depth ultra-fast|fast|basic|advanced — Trade speed for relevance
• --topic general|news|finance — Optimize for content type
• --include-answer — Get AI-generated summary
• --include-raw-content — Get full page content
• --time-range day|week|month|year — Filter by recency
• --chunks-per-source N — Chunks per source (1-5, advanced/fast)
• --include-domains / --exclude-domains — Filter sources

tavily_extract.sh

Extract full content from specific URLs (up to 20 at once).

Key options:

• --depth basic|advanced — Use advanced for JS-heavy pages
• --query TEXT — Rerank chunks by relevance
• --chunks-per-source N — Return only relevant chunks (1-5, requires --query)
• --format markdown|text — Output format

tavily_sitemap.sh

Discover URLs on a website without extracting content. Faster than crawl — use to understand site structure first.

Key options:

• --max-depth N — Crawl depth 1-5 (start with 1)
• --limit N — Total URLs cap (default: 50)
• --instructions TEXT — Focus on specific types of pages

tavily_research.sh

AI-synthesized research with citations. Takes 30-120 seconds.

Key options:

• --model mini|pro|auto — mini for focused queries, pro for comprehensive analysis
• --citation-format numbered|mla|apa|chicago
• --output-schema JSON — Get structured JSON output
• --output-file PATH — Save results to file

Cost Optimization

Domain-Specific Search

# Only search specific sites
scripts/tavily_search.sh "async python" --include-domains docs.python.org,realpython.com

# Exclude unreliable sources
scripts/tavily_search.sh "health advice" --exclude-domains reddit.com,quora.com

API Reference

See references/api_reference.md for full parameter documentation.