Agent skill

Tavily

AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided.

MITAuto-check passedProductivity & Automation

Install Tavily

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .claude/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Paste into Claude Code

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .claude/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

$skill-installer

$skill-installer install https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily

Type this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a codex

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily --agent codex

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .agents/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.

Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/

Paste into Codex

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .agents/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a cursor

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily --agent cursor

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .cursor/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.

Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/

Paste into Cursor

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .cursor/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

gemini skills install

$ gemini skills install https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git --path skills/tavily

--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a gemini-cli

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily --agent gemini-cli

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .gemini/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.

Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into Gemini CLI

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .gemini/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily

Installs for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a github-copilot

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .github/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.

GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into GitHub Copilot

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .github/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a opencode

OpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install Mathews-Tom/armory tavily --agent opencode

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tavily .opencode/skills/tavily && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.

OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into OpenCode

Install the "tavily" agent skill from https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory/tree/main/skills/tavily into .opencode/skills/tavily/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "tavily", then confirm the skill loads.

OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

Facts

Skill name: tavily
GitHub stars: 328
Token cost: ~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length: 500 words
Files: 4 (incl. scripts)
Skills in repo: 80
Repo updated: Oct 6, 2026
First seen: Oct 7, 2026
Licence: MIT

At a glance

AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided.

: search the web
SKILL.md covers When to Use Tavily vs Other…, Scripts, Search and Extract Content from URL, plus 3 more sections
Runs JavaScript scripts from its folder; calls node; reaches source.com; needs TAVILY_API_KEY
Find recent information

What it does

Tavily is an agent skill from Mathews-Tom/armory. AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided. Returns clean AI-ready snippets for current info and news. Triggers on: "search the web", "look up online", "find recent information", "web search". NOT for known URLs, use web-fetch.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 5 other files, including scripts (for example `evals/cases.yaml`).

It sits in Productivity & Automation, covering Web search. It works with Tavily. The repository describes itself as: Curated, production-grade skills for AI coding agents. Battle-tested workflows for developers who use AI seriously. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

: search the web
Find recent information

Example prompts

“search the web”
“look up online”
“find recent information”
“/tavily”

Requirements

Node.js
A credential in TAVILY_API_KEY

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 4594fb7. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

Tool permissions
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
Ships 2 files in scripts/ (JavaScript), which the agent can run.
Shell commands in SKILL.md call:
- node
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:
- source.com
Also links to:
- tavily.com
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:
- TAVILY_API_KEY
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Tavily loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 64 tokens; SKILL.md has 500 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it: ~64
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches: ~1.5k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Mathews-Tom/armory at commit 4594fb7, republished under its MIT licence (© Mathews-Tom). 500 words, ~1,504 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/tavily/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 3 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.

name: tavily
description: AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided. Returns clean AI-ready snippets for current info and news. Triggers on: "search the web", "look up online", "find recent information", "web search". NOT for known URLs, use web-fetch.
metadata.version: 1.1.1
metadata.category: research
metadata.tags: web-search, research, real-time, ai-optimized
metadata.difficulty: beginner

Tavily Search

Web search and URL content extraction powered by Tavily API. Returns clean, structured results optimized for AI consumption — no HTML noise, no cookie banners, no pagination.

When to Use Tavily vs Other Tools

Situation	Tool	Reason
Need current information on a topic	`search.mjs`	Tavily aggregates and ranks live results
Need news from the last N days	`search.mjs --topic news --days N`	News mode filters recency
Have a specific URL, need full text	`extract.mjs`	Extracts clean article content from URL
Need documentation for a library	`search.mjs --deep`	Deep mode covers docs sites thoroughly
Need a static resource already known	direct fetch or read	Skip Tavily if no live lookup needed
Need multiple competing perspectives	`search.mjs -n 10`	Increase result count for breadth

Scripts

Both scripts exist at scripts/ and require TAVILY_API_KEY in the environment.

scripts/search.mjs — query-based web search
scripts/extract.mjs — full content extraction from a URL

Search

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "query"
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "query" -n 10
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "query" --deep
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "query" --topic news
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "query" --topic news --days 3

Search Options

Option	Default	Description
`-n <count>`	5	Number of results to return (max: 20). Increase for broader coverage.
`--deep`	off	Advanced search mode — slower but more comprehensive. Use for complex research questions, technical deep-dives, or when standard results are insufficient.
`--topic <topic>`	`general`	`general` for standard search; `news` for current events filtered by recency.
`--days <n>`	—	Only valid with `--topic news`. Limits results to articles published in the last n days.

Extract Content from URL

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/extract.mjs "https://example.com/article"

Use when you already have a URL and need the full page content — Tavily strips navigation, ads, and boilerplate, returning structured article text.

Output Format

Search results return a JSON array. Each result contains:

json

[
  {
    "title": "Article or page title",
    "url": "https://source.com/path",
    "content": "Clean text snippet (AI-optimized excerpt)",
    "score": 0.92
  }
]

score is Tavily's relevance ranking (0–1). Higher is more relevant. When parsing results, use content for summarization and url for attribution. Do not treat content as the full article — use extract.mjs on the URL if complete text is needed.

Extract output returns a single object:

json

{
  "url": "https://source.com/path",
  "raw_content": "Full extracted page text..."
}

Show full SKILL.md (198 more words)Show less

Error Handling

Error	Cause	Resolution
`TAVILY_API_KEY not set`	Environment variable missing	Set `TAVILY_API_KEY` before running. Get a key at https://tavily.com
`401 Unauthorized`	Invalid API key	Verify the key value; regenerate at Tavily dashboard if needed
`429 Too Many Requests`	Rate limit hit	Reduce request frequency; free tier allows 1000 API credits/month
Empty results array `[]`	No matches found	Broaden or rephrase the query; try `--deep` for niche topics
`ETIMEDOUT` / timeout	Network or API latency	Retry once; `--deep` searches take longer (up to 30s)
Extract returns empty content	Page blocks scrapers	Use a different source or fall back to a manual fetch approach

Limitations

Rate limits: Free tier is 1000 API credits/month. Each search costs 1 credit; --deep costs more.
Content freshness: Results reflect Tavily's index; very recent content (last few hours) may not appear in general mode. Use --topic news for recency-sensitive queries.
Result quality: Tavily optimizes for AI-readable content but cannot guarantee factual accuracy. Verify critical claims from primary sources.
Paywalled content: Articles behind paywalls return only the publicly accessible excerpt.
Non-text content: PDFs, images, and media pages extract poorly or not at all.
Language: Best results for English queries. Other languages are supported but result quality varies.

Files

SKILL.md and 3 other files (scripts) in skills/tavily of Mathews-Tom/armory.

SKILL.md
evals/cases.yaml
scripts/extract.mjs
scripts/search.mjs

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 4594fb7

Compare with similar skills

Tavily next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Tavily compared with similar skills
Skill	Stars	Used in	Tokens	Auto-check	Licence	Repo updated
Tavily this skillMathews-Tom/armory	328	—	~1.5k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	4 days ago
Ultimate Searchckckck/UltimateSearchSkill	289	—	~944	Automated safety check: Notes	MIT	6 mo ago
Web SearchEXboys/skilllite	170	2 repos	~1k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	14 days ago
Mysearchskernelx/MySearch-Proxy	159	—	~3k	Automated safety check: Notes	None	6 mo ago
Tavilyopenclaw/openclaw	392k	2 repos	~1.2k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	today
Web Search Plus Plugin V2robbyczgw-cla/web-search-plus-plugin	101	—	~1.9k	Automated safety check: Notes	MIT	16 days ago

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Questions about Tavily

What does Tavily do?

AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided. Tavily is an agent skill from Mathews-Tom/armory. AI-optimized web search via Tavily API when no URL is provided.

When should I use Tavily?

Tavily fits situations like: : search the web; find recent information.

How do I install Tavily in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/tavily in Mathews-Tom/armory) into .claude/skills/tavily in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Tavily in Codex?

Run `npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/tavily in Mathews-Tom/armory) into .agents/skills/tavily in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Tavily in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add Mathews-Tom/armory --skill tavily -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/tavily, .gemini/skills/tavily, .github/skills/tavily and .opencode/skills/tavily in your project.

What does Tavily need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Tavily needs JavaScript for the scripts in its folder, the command-line tools its instructions call (node) and credentials named TAVILY_API_KEY. Our summary lists: Node.js; A credential in TAVILY_API_KEY.

Does Tavily access the network?

SKILL.md names 2 domains. In commands or code: source.com; the agent is likely to contact it when it follows the instructions. As links in the text: tavily.com. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Tavily safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Tavily use?

Tavily is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Tavily use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Tavily?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Tavily: Ultimate Search (ckckck/UltimateSearchSkill, 289 stars), Web Search (EXboys/skilllite, 170 stars), Mysearch (skernelx/MySearch-Proxy, 159 stars) and Tavily (openclaw/openclaw, 392k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Tavily?

Mathews-Tom (a GitHub user) maintains it in Mathews-Tom/armory, which has 328 GitHub stars. The repository holds 80 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 6, 2026.

Source: Mathews-Tom/armory on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.

Install Tavily

Facts

At a glance

What it does

When your agent uses it

Example prompts

Requirements

What it can do on your machine

Tool permissions

Runs code

Network

Credentials

Context cost

Safety

SKILL.md

Tavily Search

When to Use Tavily vs Other Tools

Scripts

Search

Search Options

Extract Content from URL

Output Format

Error Handling

Limitations

Files

Compare with similar skills

Similar skills

More from Mathews-Tom/armory

Related

Questions about Tavily