Tavily Search

Web search using Tavily's LLM-optimized API. Returns relevant results with content snippets, scores, and metadata.

Security Scan

The skill's code, instructions, and required credential (TAVILY_API_KEY) are consistent with a simple Tavily web-search wrapper and do not request unrelated access.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description match the included script and declared requirements. The only required binary is node and the only required env var is TAVILY_API_KEY, both necessary for calling Tavily's API.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md instructs the agent to set the Tavily API key and run the provided Node script with query options. Instructions do not ask the agent to read unrelated files, other env vars, or send data to endpoints outside api.tavily.com.

Install Mechanism

No install spec (instruction-only) and a small included script; nothing is downloaded from third-party URLs or written to disk beyond the script itself.

Credentials

Only TAVILY_API_KEY is required and is used directly as a Bearer token to authenticate to api.tavily.com. No other credentials, secret-named env vars, or config paths are requested.

Persistence & Privilege

Skill is not marked always:true and does not modify system or other skills. disable-model-invocation is false (normal); the skill can be invoked autonomously by the agent, which is expected behavior for skills.

Assessment

This skill appears to be a straightforward wrapper around Tavily's search API. Before installing, confirm you trust tavily.com and understand that any query you run (and, if enabled, the --raw-content option) will be sent to api.tavily.com along with your TAVILY_API_KEY. Keep the API key secret, check Tavily's privacy and usage policies, and verify rate limits or billing tied to the key. If you are concerned about autonomous agent invocation, consider disabling autonomous use (disable-model-invocation) or only enabling the skill when you explicitly call it. Finally, verify the skill source (homepage and publisher) if you require stronger provenance guarantees.

Search the web and get relevant results optimized for LLM consumption.

Authentication

Get your API key at https://tavily.com and add to your OpenClaw config:

{
  "skills": {
    "entries": {
      "tavily-search": {
        "enabled": true,
        "apiKey": "tvly-YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or set the environment variable:

export TAVILY_API_KEY="tvly-YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

Quick Start

Using the Script

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

Examples

# Basic search
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "python async patterns"

# With more results
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "React hooks tutorial" -n 10

# Advanced search
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "machine learning" --deep

# News search
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "AI news" --topic news

# Domain-filtered search
node {baseDir}/scripts/search.mjs "Python docs" --include-domains docs.python.org

Options

Option	Description	Default
-n <count>	Number of results (1-20)	10
--depth <mode>	Search depth: ultra-fast, fast, basic, advanced	basic
--topic <topic>	Topic: general or news	general
--time-range <range>	Time range: day, week, month, year	-
--include-domains <domains>	Comma-separated domains to include	-
--exclude-domains <domains>	Comma-separated domains to exclude	-
--raw-content	Include full page content	false
--json	Output raw JSON	false

Search Depth

Depth	Latency	Relevance	Use Case
ultra-fast	Lowest	Lower	Real-time chat, autocomplete
fast	Low	Good	Need chunks but latency matters
basic	Medium	High	General-purpose, balanced
advanced	Higher	Highest	Precision matters, research

Tips

• Keep queries under 400 characters - Think search query, not prompt
• Break complex queries into sub-queries - Better results than one massive query
• Use --include-domains to focus on trusted sources
• Use --time-range for recent information
• Filter by score (0-1) to get highest relevance results