researchsearch

researchsearch is a research desk for the web, powered by the Tavily API. It searches with ranked, content-bearing results (and an optional generated answer), pulls the clean text out of specific pages, crawls a site page by page under limits you set, and maps a site's structure so you can see what is there before you read it. It works from the command line or as an MCP server for agents.

A Tavily API key is required. Put it in the TAVILY_API_KEY environment variable; without it, every operation stops with an error that names the missing variable, before any request is made.

Install

export TAVILY_API_KEY="tvly-..."
npx @reneturcios/researchsearch search "composting basics"

Or run the container image:

docker run -i -e TAVILY_API_KEY="tvly-..." ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/researchsearch

The container defaults to the MCP server (see below). Pass CLI arguments to use it as a CLI instead.

Related MCP server: Tavily MCP Server

CLI

# Search; results print as JSON
researchsearch search "composting basics"
researchsearch search "rate decision" --topic news --days 3 --max-results 5 --answer

# Extract the clean content of one or more pages
researchsearch extract https://example.com/article
researchsearch extract https://example.com/a https://example.com/b --depth advanced

# Crawl a site from a starting page
researchsearch crawl https://example.com --max-depth 2 --limit 25
researchsearch crawl https://example.com --instructions "Focus on the guides"

# Map a site's structure (URLs only, no page content)
researchsearch map https://example.com --max-depth 1 --limit 50

researchsearch --version

Exit codes: 0 on success, 1 when an operation fails (a missing TAVILY_API_KEY, an HTTP error from the service, an unreachable host), 2 for usage errors.

MCP server

One bin serves both faces. The mcp subcommand starts a stdio MCP server:

npx -y @reneturcios/researchsearch mcp

MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "researchsearch": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@reneturcios/researchsearch", "mcp"],
      "env": {
        "TAVILY_API_KEY": "tvly-..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools

Each tool is one call to the matching Tavily API endpoint. Only the parameters you set are sent — unset optionals are omitted so the service applies its own defaults — and each response is the service's JSON, passed back unchanged.

Development

npm install
npm run build   # tsc -> dist/
npm test        # node test runner over test/*.test.ts, no network (fake fetch fixtures)
npm run dev     # run the CLI from source via tsx

License

MIT — see LICENSE.