Kagi Usage

Kagi CLI

Search the web and read pages with kagi. Route every other Kagi task to the skill named below.

Route the task

Load the skill when it appears in the available skills listing. Otherwise run kagi skills get <name> for the same guidance.

kagi skills list
kagi skills get kagi-assistant

Search the web

Discover sources, narrow the question, and return evidence that matches the depth the user asked for.

quick, session-only search controls, and the subscriber search path require session auth. The current Search API uses KAGI_API_KEY. Public news and smallweb need no credentials.

1. Define the claim or question that needs evidence.
2. Start with one broad search, or quick for a bounded factual question.
3. Split the topic into distinct queries when one query cannot cover it.
4. Prefer primary sources and direct evidence.
5. Use --follow only when the user needs the top result pages summarized.
6. Report source disagreement instead of flattening it.

kagi search "rust async cancellation" --format toon --limit 5
kagi quick "what is the current Kagi Search API endpoint?" --format markdown

Search controls

kagi search "query" --region us --format toon --limit 10
kagi search "query" --time month --order recency --format json
kagi search "query" --snap reddit --format toon
kagi search "query" --lens 2 --format toon
kagi search "query" --follow 3 --format markdown

Session-only controls include --lens, --time, --order, --verbatim, personalization flags, and News vertical search. Use --local-cache only when stale results are acceptable.

Query design

• Quote exact error messages or disputed phrases.
• Add official domains with site: when a primary source is known.
• Use native-language query terms for regional or multilingual research.
• Separate discovery, counterevidence, and recency into different queries.
• Use --region as a result bias, never as a language guarantee.

kagi batch \
  "topic official documentation" \
  "topic limitations" \
  "topic independent review" \
  --format toon --limit 5

News and discovery

kagi news --category tech --limit 10
kagi news --list-categories
kagi news --chaos
kagi search "open source ai" --news --format toon
kagi smallweb

Use news for the public Kagi News feed. Use search --news when the query must filter the News vertical.

Work with one page

Work from the source the user supplied. Search the web only when the task needs evidence that page cannot give.

Extract a page

Use extract when downstream work needs the article body rather than a summary. Prefer extract over browser scraping for readable main content. It requires the current KAGI_API_KEY, never the legacy KAGI_API_TOKEN.

kagi extract "https://example.com/article"

Summarize

Prefer subscriber mode when a session token is available.

kagi summarize --subscriber --url "https://example.com/article"
kagi summarize --subscriber --text "long text"
kagi summarize --subscriber \
  --url "https://example.com/article" \
  --summary-type keypoints

Use the public API mode only when the legacy API token is configured or the task needs its engine controls.

kagi summarize --url "https://example.com/article"
kagi summarize --text "long text" --engine cecil

Never summarize content that must be quoted or checked precisely. Extract it and inspect the relevant passage instead.

Ask one page

Use ask-page for a focused question whose evidence should come from one URL.

kagi ask-page \
  "https://example.com/article" \
  "what evidence supports the main claim?" \
  --format markdown

When the question needs outside evidence or comparison, search the web instead.

Translate

kagi translate \
  --text "Bonjour tout le monde" \
  --target-language EN

Preserve code, URLs, product names, and other text that must stay untranslated. State the target language explicitly.

Shared rules

1. Run kagi auth status before treating a command as unavailable.
2. Choose the narrowest command that produces the requested outcome.
3. Use --format json for programmatic parsing.
4. Use --format toon for compact LLM context.
5. Use --format markdown for prose that a person will read.
6. Run kagi auth check when credentials exist but a request fails.
7. Never print credential values.

kagi auth status
kagi auth check

Completion criteria

Web research is complete when:

• the answer addresses the exact question;
• important claims trace to source URLs;
• source quality and recency match the claim;
• disagreement and uncertainty appear in the output; and
• the output uses the requested format and depth.

Page work is complete when:

• the command matches the requested transformation;
• the output stays grounded in the supplied URL or text;
• quotes remain distinguishable from summaries;
• the output keeps the requested language and format; and
• you report a source-access failure instead of guessing past it.

Mail

Mail uses separate OAuth credentials and private connection settings. Run kagi mail login after configuring [mail].endpoint and [mail].client_id. Search API keys and session tokens do not grant mail access.

kagi mail boxes
kagi mail search --mailbox Inbox --unread --limit 10
kagi mail search "contract renewal" --semantic --format toon
kagi mail read MESSAGE_ID --format pretty
kagi mail read --thread THREAD_ID --new-text-only

Use exact search for known words, senders, subjects, or dates. Add --semantic for a topic described in natural language. Use returned IDs to read messages. The MCP exposes no send, delete, mark-read, or attachment-download operation. Mail content stays out of the CLI's local history and response cache.