Tavily Crawl

tavily crawl

Crawl a website and extract content from multiple pages. Supports saving each page as a local markdown file.

Before running

Crawl 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. 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 content from many pages on a site (e.g., all /docs/)
• You want to download documentation for offline use
• Step 4 in the workflow: search → extract → map → crawl → research

Quick start

# Basic crawl
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --json

# Save each page as a markdown file
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --output-dir ./docs/

# Deeper crawl with limits
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --max-depth 2 --limit 50 --json

# Filter to specific paths
tvly crawl "https://example.com" --select-paths "/api/.*,/guides/.*" --exclude-paths "/blog/.*" --json

# Semantic focus (returns relevant chunks, not full pages)
tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --instructions "Find authentication docs" --chunks-per-source 3 --json

Options

Crawl for context vs. data collection

For agentic use (feeding results to an LLM):

Always use --instructions + --chunks-per-source. Returns only relevant chunks instead of full pages — prevents context explosion.

tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --instructions "API authentication" --chunks-per-source 3 --json

For data collection (saving to files):

Use --output-dir without --chunks-per-source to get full pages as markdown files.

tvly crawl "https://docs.example.com" --max-depth 2 --output-dir ./docs/

Tips

• Start conservative — --max-depth 1, --limit 20 — and scale up.
• Use --select-paths to focus on the section you need.
• Use map first to understand site structure before a full crawl.
• Always set --limit to prevent runaway crawls.

See also

• tavily-map — discover URLs before deciding to crawl
• tavily-extract — extract individual pages
• tavily-search — find pages when you don't have a URL