Tavily

Tavily is a search API built for agents and RAG — it returns ranked results with a relevant content snippet and a score per hit. Routeplane speaks it natively as a backend for the built-in web search tool.

Get a key

Create an API key in the Tavily dashboard and export it:

export TAVILY_API_KEY=...

Add Tavily to Routeplane

Declare a tavily backend under server_tools.web_search. The key resolves from an explicit api_key (which supports ${VAR}) or, when omitted, the conventional TAVILY_API_KEY:

routeplane.yaml

server_tools:
  web_search:
    backends:
      - kind: tavily       # key from api_key or TAVILY_API_KEY

**Preference and failover.** `backends` is an ordered list — the first whose key resolves is the default, and a failing backend falls over to the next. List Tavily alongside [Exa](/integrations/exa), [Parallel](/integrations/parallel), or [Firecrawl](/integrations/firecrawl) to chain them.

Use it

A request turns the tool on by declaring it; pin Tavily with args.backend:

{ "tools": [ { "type": "routeplane:web_search", "args": { "backend": "tavily" } } ] }

The model then calls web_search with a query; Routeplane runs it against Tavily and feeds the results back inside the tool loop. Tavily fills title, snippet (content), score, and published on each result.

Learn more

• Web search — the result schema, per-request max_results, and loop bounds.
• Tavily — documentation