Content Research

🔍 Content Research Skill

📦 Install: npx clawhub@latest install mcbaivn-content-research

Search the web for trending articles, news, and content sources on any topic. This skill powers the MCB AI content research pipeline — finding, filtering, scoring, and organizing source material for content creation.

Search Strategy: Brave + Tavily Dual-Engine

This skill uses TWO search providers in parallel for maximum coverage:

• Brave Search — via web_search tool (built-in OpenClaw tool)
• Tavily — via direct API call using TAVILY_API_KEY from ~/.openclaw/.env

Tavily API Call

POST https://api.tavily.com/search
Headers: Content-Type: application/json
Body:
{
  "api_key": "<TAVILY_API_KEY>",
  "query": "<query>",
  "search_depth": "advanced",
  "include_answer": false,
  "include_raw_content": false,
  "max_results": 10,
  "topic": "news"
}

Run Tavily via exec with PowerShell:

$body = @{
  api_key = $env:TAVILY_API_KEY
  query = "<query>"
  search_depth = "advanced"
  include_answer = $false
  include_raw_content = $false
  max_results = 10
  topic = "news"
} | ConvertTo-Json

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.tavily.com/search" -Method Post -ContentType "application/json" -Body $body

Fallback Logic

• Run Brave (web_search) and Tavily in parallel
• If Brave fails → use Tavily results only
• If Tavily fails → use Brave results only
• If both succeed → merge and deduplicate by URL

When to Use

• User wants to research a topic before writing content
• User needs to find recent articles, news, or data about a subject
• User wants to discover trending content sources for LinkedIn/social media
• User needs to curate sources for a toplist, POV, case study, or how-to post

Core Workflow

Step 1: Understand the Research Request

Extract from the user's message:

1. Topic — the subject to research (required)
2. Source filter — where to search (default: all sources)
3. Freshness — how recent (default: past month for web, past week for news)
4. Count — how many results to return (default: 10-15)

Step 2: Execute Dual Search (Brave + Tavily)

Run BOTH providers. Each provider runs TWO queries when possible.

Step 3: Merge and Deduplicate

1. Collect all results from Brave (web + news) and Tavily (general + news)
2. Deduplicate by URL — keep one copy per URL
3. Sort by relevance (news first, then by freshness)
4. Limit to requested count (default 15)
5. Label source engine in metadata

Step 4: Process and Organize Results

For each result, extract and structure:

• Title, Source, URL, Date, Summary, Type, Tag, Engine

Step 5: Present Results

Present organized results in a clear, scannable format. Then ask the user which articles they want to use for content creation.

Integration with Content Writer

After research, pass selected articles to the content-writer skill.

See references/source-filters.md for detailed source filter configurations.