Discover API

Bright Data — Discover API

Discover is intent-ranked semantic web search. You give it a query plus an intent, and it returns results scored by AI relevance — optionally with the full parsed page content. It is the right primitive when result quality/relevance matters more than raw keyword rank, and the building block for retrieval (RAG), research, and knowledge-base pipelines.

Discover vs. the neighbors:

• Keyword "what ranks for X" SERP → use the search skill (bdata search).
• Structured data from a known platform (Amazon/LinkedIn/…) → use data-feeds.
• A whole research brief or a RAG/search pipeline on top of Discover → use live-research or rag-pipeline (both call this API).

How it works (async: trigger → poll)

1. Trigger a job → you get a task_id.
2. Poll with the task_id until status is "done" (intermediate: "processing").
3. Read results[].

The CLI and SDKs do the trigger+poll for you; the raw REST flow is shown below for when you need parameters the wrappers don't expose (notably mode).

Pick your surface

CLI — bdata discover

Setup gate first:

command -v bdata >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "CLI missing — see bright-data-best-practices/references/cli-setup.md"
bdata zones >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "not authenticated — run: bdata login"

# Intent-ranked discovery, JSON
bdata discover "enterprise LLM platforms" \
  --intent "vendor pages with pricing" \
  --num-results 15 --json --pretty

# With parsed page content in one pass (for RAG / research)
bdata discover "webhook retry best practices" \
  --include-content --num-results 10 -o results.json

# Date-bounded
bdata discover "react server components" \
  --start-date 2025-01-01 --end-date 2025-12-31 --num-results 20 --json

Results live at .results[]; each has title, link, description, relevance_score, and content when --include-content. Full CLI flag list: search skill → references/flags.md.

SDK (one line each)

// JS — see js-sdk-best-practices for all options.
// VERIFIED v1.1.0: discover() returns a WRAPPER { success, data:[...], totalResults, cost, taskId, ... }
const res = await client.discover('Tesla battery tech', { intent: 'EV battery breakthroughs', numResults: 10, includeContent: true });
const rows = res.data;   // ← rows are in .data (NOT a bare array, NOT .results)

# Python — see python-sdk-best-practices (confirm whether rows come back directly, under .data, or .results)
out = client.discover(query="Tesla battery tech", intent="EV battery breakthroughs")

Raw REST (full control, incl. mode)

# 1) Trigger
task_id=$(curl -s -X POST https://api.brightdata.com/discover \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"post-quantum cryptography adoption","intent":"enterprise migration guides","mode":"deep","num_results":20,"include_content":true}' \
  | jq -r '.task_id')

# 2) Poll until done
while :; do
  resp=$(curl -s "https://api.brightdata.com/discover?task_id=$task_id" -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN")
  [ "$(echo "$resp" | jq -r '.status')" = "done" ] && break
  sleep 3
done
echo "$resp" | jq '.results'

Parameters (REST body — authoritative superset)

query is required; everything else is optional. The CLI/SDK expose a subset (see references/api-reference.md for the exact per-surface matrix).

Modes (choose by goal)

mode is currently REST-only — the CLI and SDKs don't expose it. For deep coverage via the CLI/SDK, approximate with a high num_results + a sharp intent; for true deep/zeroRanking, use the raw REST flow above.

Result shape

REST + CLI (verified) — rows live under results:

{
  "status": "done",
  "duration_seconds": 12.4,
  "timestamp": "2026-06-08T08:36:55.709Z",
  "results": [
    { "link": "https://…", "title": "…", "description": "…",
      "relevance_score": 0.87, "content": "…(when --include-content)…" }
  ]
}

JS SDK (verified v1.1.0) — rows live under data, inside a wrapper:

{ success: true, data: [ {link, title, description, relevance_score, content?} ],
  totalResults, cost, taskId, query, intent, durationSeconds, triggerSentAt, dataFetchedAt }

⚠️ Cross-surface gotcha: REST/CLI return rows under .results; the JS SDK returns them under .data (and wraps everything in {success, ...} — check success before reading data). Don't assume one shape across surfaces.

relevance_score is a float (snake_case). Higher = more relevant to intent. content is plain text by default (Markdown when REST format=md). A high relevance_score does not guarantee good content — pages can be 404 stubs or nav-only; gate on content length + "not found"/block-page signatures before use.

Verification gate

1. Trigger returned a task_id (REST: status:"ok"). No id → check auth / that Discover is enabled on the account (403 if disabled).
2. Polled to status:"done" before reading — never read results while processing.
3. results[] non-empty — if empty, the query/intent is too narrow; loosen and retry. Don't claim success on empty.
4. include_content bodies aren't block pages — grep content for captcha, Just a moment, Access Denied, cf-browser-verification (same list as scrape). Drop poisoned rows.
5. Relevance sanity — if top relevance_scores are low or off-topic, sharpen intent (not just query).

Red flags

• Passing only query with no intent — you lose the whole point (intent ranking). Always give an intent.
• Treating Discover as keyword SERP — for "what ranks for X", use search.
• Setting num_results > 20 — capped at 20; for more, run multiple targeted queries and dedup (see live-research).
• Using zeroRanking then expecting include_content or num_results to apply — they don't.
• Reading results before status:"done".
• Treating an intermittent success:false (SDK) / empty results (REST/CLI) as a hard error — it's often transient; retry once with backoff first (see references/api-reference.md → Transient failures).
• Fabricating relevance_score or content when a call fails — report the failure instead.

References

• references/api-reference.md — full REST endpoint spec, the exact param matrix per surface (REST vs CLI vs JS SDK vs Python SDK), error codes, and limits.

Related skills

• live-research — multi-query Discover → dedup → synthesized cited brief.
• rag-pipeline — Discover (include_content) → chunk → embed → retrieve.
• search — keyword SERP (bdata search) when you don't need intent ranking.
• js-sdk-best-practices / python-sdk-best-practices — client.discover() option details.