Tavily Search

Reviewed 2026-10-21dataPrompt / Rule# web-search # tavily # research # cli # news

Tavily's official tavily-search skill: web search with LLM-optimized snippets, domain filters and time ranges via the tvly CLI.

Security Reviewed

Instruction-only skill that sends searches to Tavily through the tvly CLI; the main thing to check is the curl-to-bash CLI installer.

Install Tavily Search in Google Antigravity

Antigravity loads skills from .agents/skills/ in your project or ~/.gemini/config/skills/ for all projects (official docs). Full guide

EasiestOption 1: paste this to your Antigravity agent

Install the "Tavily Search" skill for Google Antigravity.
Follow the steps at https://www.antigravityskills.org/install/tavily-search.md (source: https://github.com/tavily-ai/skills/tree/main/skills/tavily-search).
Before running anything, show me what you will download and whether it includes scripts, and wait for my OK.
Install it into this project (.agents/skills/) unless I say global. When done, check that Antigravity lists it as an installed skill.

The agent reads the install file, shows you what it will download and waits for your OK.

Option 2: install it yourself

1. Clone the repository

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tavily-ai/skills.git /tmp/tavily-skills

Download Tavily's official skills repo.

2. Copy into your workspace
```
mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -R /tmp/tavily-skills/skills/tavily-search /tmp/tavily-skills/skills/tavily-cli .agents/skills/
```
Run from your project root. tavily-search links to ../tavily-cli for setup, so copy both folders.

3. Or install globally

mkdir -p ~/.gemini/config/skills && cp -R /tmp/tavily-skills/skills/tavily-search /tmp/tavily-skills/skills/tavily-cli ~/.gemini/config/skills/

Use this instead of the previous step to make the skills available in every project.

4. Install the CLI and check
```
uv tool install tavily-cli
```
Or `pip install tavily-cli`. Then ask "What skills do you have?" in Antigravity (Antigravity CLI: /skills), or ask "What skills do you have?", and confirm tavily-search is listed.

Needs the tvly CLI. Search works keyless up to a cap; map, crawl and research need a Tavily login (`tvly login`) or TAVILY_API_KEY. The skills README does not mention Antigravity, so this manual copy is our path, not the project's; `tvly init` will not set Antigravity up for you. The CLI talks to Tavily's service (mcp.tavily.com and the Tavily API), so Antigravity must be allowed to run `tvly` and reach the internet.

Using Claude Code, Cursor or Codex? See other assistants below.

What is Tavily Search?

For developers who want a coding agent to look things up on the live web instead of guessing from training data. tavily-search is one of eight skills in Tavily's official tavily-ai/skills repo. It tells the agent to search with the Tavily CLI (`tvly search "query" --json`) and returns results with content snippets, relevance scores and metadata. It supports four search depths from ultra-fast to advanced, news and finance topics, date ranges and domain include/exclude lists. The search itself runs on Tavily's servers, so every query leaves your machine.

How to use Tavily Search?

Install the tvly CLI and the skills, then ask your agent to search for something, find articles, or get the latest news on a topic. Search works keyless up to a rate-limit cap; run `tvly login` when the cap is reached. Name a domain or a time window in plain words ("only sec.gov", "from the last week") and the agent maps it to --include-domains or --time-range.

Key features of Tavily Search

✓We counted at 778122e: tavily-search is 1 file (4,138 bytes, 95 lines, 600 words) and the repo has 8 skill folders whose SKILL.md files total 35,084 bytes (3,475 to 5,963 each); only tavily-best-practices has a second folder (references/)
✓We counted: the options table has 16 entries, including --depth (ultra-fast, fast, basic default, advanced), --topic (general, news, finance), --time-range, start and end dates, and include or exclude domain lists
✓README says: tvly search and tvly extract work without authentication up to a keyless rate-limit cap; map, crawl and research need a login
✓SKILL.md limits shell access with allowed-tools: Bash(tvly *), so the skill itself can only run the tvly command
✓Returns 0-20 results per query (default 5), and can add an AI answer, full page content, images and image descriptions
✓Tips we counted in SKILL.md: keep queries under 400 characters, split complex questions, and confirm identity-sensitive facts at the official source
✓We counted in the CLI source (tavily-ai/tavily-cli at 3485f78, version 0.1.9): `tvly init` installs the skills from a pinned older snapshot of this repo (ea5e820, 2026-06-04, archive checked by SHA-256), not the current HEAD (778122e, 2026-09-04); tavily-search/SKILL.md differs by 24 lines between the two. `npx skills add` or a git clone gives you HEAD

When to use Tavily Search

1Looking up current information or recent news from inside a coding agent
2Finding sources on a topic before extracting or crawling them
3Searching only trusted domains, e.g. sec.gov or reuters.com
4First step of the search → extract → map → crawl → research workflow

Installation & Setup Guide

Agent Rules / Prompt Setup

Follow these steps (taken from the project's own docs) to configure Tavily Search in your development environment.

Step 1: Guided setup (recommended)Claude Code, Cursor

curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash && tvly init

`tvly init` authenticates, detects Claude Code, Codex and Cursor (the agents the README names), installs the skills and runs a live test search (README). Use `tvly init --skip-auth` to stay keyless. It does not cover Antigravity.

Step 2: Manual skill installall

npx skills add https://github.com/tavily-ai/skills

For other agents, or to install only the skills. Install the CLI separately with `uv tool install tavily-cli` or `pip install tavily-cli`.

Step 3: Keep it currentall

tvly update

Skills installed by `tvly init` are pinned to the CLI release; run `tvly update` before `tvly init` to refresh them.

Step 4: Claude Code plugin manifestClaude Code

The repo has .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and plugin.json (plugin name tavily, version 1.0.0, skills ./skills/), but the README documents no /plugin command, so we do not give one. Use the guided setup above.

Usage Example & Verification

Prompt / Request Example

1) SKILL.md quick-start: tvly search "quantum computing" --depth advanced --max-results 10 --json
-> Up to 10 results with snippets and scores as JSON, using the slower, most relevant depth.

2) SKILL.md quick-start: tvly search "AI news" --time-range week --topic news --json
-> News-topic results limited to the past week.

3) Our example prompt: "Find articles from the last week about the Next.js 16 release and list the sources."
-> The agent runs tvly search with --time-range week and --json, then summarizes the results with their URLs.

Security Review

Static review

Reviewed Date

2026-10-21

Audited Ref / Commit

778122e5f9c680f541eeceda5a5b36405eb7980c

Reviewer

antigravityskills.org (static code review)

Instruction-only skill that sends searches to Tavily through the tvly CLI; the main thing to check is the curl-to-bash CLI installer.

Full review: scope, findings, risks

Audit Scope:tavily-ai/skills at HEAD 778122e (2026-09-04; tavily-search last changed 017fc3c, 2026-09-03): skills/tavily-search/SKILL.md, skills/tavily-cli/SKILL.md, the sizes of all 8 SKILL.md files, README.md, .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and plugin.json, LICENSE. tavily-ai/tavily-cli at 3485f78 (2026-10-13): install.sh in full, tavily_cli/init_skills.py, config.py, oauth.py and mcp_client.py for hosts and install targets; the rest of the CLI source was not reviewed. The hosted https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh could not be fetched from our sandbox, so we did not compare it with the repo copy. Nothing was run.

Key Findings:Instruction-only skill with allowed-tools Bash(tvly *). All network access goes through the tvly CLI to Tavily (mcp.tavily.com for OAuth and tool calls, per the CLI source). Setup in tavily-cli/SKILL.md recommends `curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash`; the repo's install.sh only installs the tavily-cli package with uv, pipx or pip. The skill tells the agent not to hunt for API keys before the first search and not to start interactive login in unattended runs. The CLI's `tvly init` downloads a pinned archive of this repo from codeload.github.com and checks its SHA-256.

Identified Operational Risks & Permissions:Queries and any included content are sent to Tavily; curl-pipe-bash installer; `--include-raw-content` and `-o` can pull large page content or write JSON files locally.

Static review at skills 778122e and tavily-cli 3485f78; nothing was executed. skills/tavily-search/SKILL.md contains no scripts and restricts the agent to Bash(tvly *) through allowed-tools. Every search is a network call made by the tvly CLI to Tavily. skills/tavily-cli/SKILL.md (Setup) recommends `curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash`, with `uv tool install tavily-cli` or `pip install tavily-cli` as alternatives. The install.sh in tavily-ai/tavily-cli is 194 lines and only picks uv, pipx or pip to install or upgrade the package tavily-cli (no other downloads, no sudo); we could not retrieve the hosted copy to confirm it is identical. Authentication is browser OAuth via `tvly login`/`tvly init` against mcp.tavily.com with a localhost callback, or TAVILY_API_KEY for CI per README.md. The skill instructs the agent not to look for API keys before the first keyless search and, in unattended environments, to report the cap instead of starting a login. `-o/--output` writes the JSON response to a local file and `--include-raw-content` can pull whole pages into the agent's context. `tvly init` writes skills into ~/.agents/skills and links them into the Claude Code, Codex and Cursor skill folders. We did not review the CLI's other commands or the Tavily service itself.

Operational Notes & Known Limitations

Known Limitations

•Requires the Tavily CLI (`tvly`, a Python package with 9 runtime dependencies at version 0.1.9)
•Keyless search is capped; beyond that you need a Tavily login or TAVILY_API_KEY
•In unattended runs the skill reports the cap instead of starting the browser login flow
•Its setup instructions live in the sibling tavily-cli skill, so copy both folders
•Max 20 results per query
•Neither the skills README nor the CLI README mentions Antigravity: `tvly init` (CLI 0.1.9) only knows Claude Code, Codex and Cursor and writes the skills to ~/.agents/skills first. For Antigravity use the manual copy below
•Different from the free-form browsing skills on our site (browser-use, agent-browser): this skill returns search results from Tavily's index, it does not open or click pages; page content comes from `tavily-extract` or `--include-raw-content`

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Tavily Search skill safe?

The skill is a single SKILL.md with no scripts, limited to Bash(tvly *) commands. Your search queries go to Tavily's service. The recommended installer is piped from curl into bash (cli.tavily.com/install.sh); we read the install.sh in the tavily-cli repo, which only installs the tavily-cli package with uv, pipx or pip, but we could not fetch the hosted copy. If you prefer, install with `uv tool install tavily-cli` or `pip install tavily-cli` instead.

How do I install Tavily Search in Antigravity?

Clone tavily-ai/skills and copy skills/tavily-search and skills/tavily-cli into .agents/skills/ in your project (or ~/.gemini/config/skills/ globally), install the tvly CLI, then ask "What skills do you have?" (Antigravity CLI: /skills) to check.

Do I need a Tavily API key?

Not to start. The README says `tvly search` and `tvly extract` work without authentication up to a keyless rate-limit cap. map, crawl and research need authentication.

What other Tavily skills are there?

The repo also has tavily-extract, tavily-crawl, tavily-map, tavily-research, tavily-dynamic-search, tavily-cli and tavily-best-practices.

What license is it under?

Does `tvly init` install it for Antigravity?

No. In CLI 0.1.9 the init command supports Claude Code, Codex and Cursor only, and it installs a pinned older snapshot of the skills. Copy tavily-search and tavily-cli from the repo into .agents/skills/ yourself.

Supported Platforms

antigravityclaudecodexcursor

View Source on GitHub

Keep exploring this topic

Browse the full Antigravity skills directory for more source-linked skills with install steps and static safety reviews.

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