/tavily-research

name: tavily-research
description: |
  Conduct comprehensive AI-powered research with citations via the Tavily CLI. Use this skill when the user wants deep research, a detailed report, a comparison, market analysis, literature review, or says "research", "investigate", "analyze in depth", "compare X vs Y", "what does the market look like for", or needs multi-source synthesis with explicit citations. Returns a structured report grounded in web sources. Takes 30-120 seconds. For quick fact-finding, use tavily-search instead.
allowed-tools: Bash(tvly *)

tavily research

AI-powered deep research that gathers sources, analyzes them, and produces a cited report. Takes 30-120 seconds.

Before running

Research requires authentication. Run the requested command directly when `tvly` is already authenticated; do not add a status check to every invocation.

If `tvly` is missing, follow the [tavily-cli setup](../tavily-cli/SKILL.md#setup). If an installed CLI reports an authentication error, use `tvly login` for authentication only, or `tvly init --skip-skills` when guided verification is also useful. Browser-based OAuth is preferred when an interactive user can complete it. `--no-browser` prints the sign-in link instead of opening it, but still waits for a localhost callback. In an unattended agent or CI environment, leave authentication to the user or use a securely provided `TAVILY_API_KEY`. Do not start a second login immediately after guided setup has completed.

When to use

• You need comprehensive, multi-source analysis
• The user wants a comparison, market report, or literature review
• Quick searches aren't enough — you need synthesis with citations
• Step 5 in the [workflow](../tavily-cli/SKILL.md): search → extract → map → crawl → **research**

Quick start

# Basic research (waits for completion)
tvly research "competitive landscape of AI code assistants"

# Pro model for comprehensive analysis
tvly research "electric vehicle market analysis" --model pro

# Stream results in real-time
tvly research "AI agent frameworks comparison" --stream

# Save report to file
tvly research "fintech trends 2025" --model pro -o fintech-report.json

# JSON output for agents
tvly research "quantum computing breakthroughs" --json

Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | `--model` | `mini`, `pro`, or `auto` (default) | | `--stream` | Stream results in real-time | | `--no-wait` | Return request_id immediately (async) | | `--output-schema` | Path to JSON schema for structured output | | `--citation-format` | `numbered`, `mla`, `apa`, `chicago` | | `--poll-interval` | Seconds between checks (default: 10) | | `--timeout` | Max wait seconds (default: 600) | | `-o, --output` | Save the JSON response to a file | | `--json` | Structured JSON output |

Model selection

| Model | Use for | Speed | |-------|---------|-------| | `mini` | Single-topic, targeted research | ~30s | | `pro` | Comprehensive multi-angle analysis | ~60-120s | | `auto` | API chooses based on complexity | Varies |

**Rule of thumb:** "What does X do?" → mini. "X vs Y vs Z" or "best way to..." → pro.

Async workflow

For long-running research, you can start and poll separately:

# Start without waiting
tvly research "topic" --no-wait --json    # returns request_id

# Check status
tvly research status <request_id> --json

# Wait for completion
tvly research poll <request_id> --json -o result.json

Tips

• **Research takes 30-120 seconds** — use `--stream` to see progress in real-time.
• **Use `--model pro`** for complex comparisons or multi-faceted topics.
• **Use `--output-schema`** to get structured JSON output matching a custom schema.
• **For quick facts**, use `tvly search` instead — research is for deep synthesis.
• Read from stdin: `echo "query" | tvly research - --json`

See also

• [tavily-search](../tavily-search/SKILL.md) — quick web search for simple lookups
• [tavily-crawl](../tavily-crawl/SKILL.md) — bulk extract from a site for your own analysis