Codex

Give Codex live web search, extraction, crawling, and research. In Codex in the ChatGPT desktop app, install the official Tavily plugin, which bundles Tavily’s MCP tools and skills. In the Codex CLI and IDE extension, connect Tavily’s hosted MCP server. All three share one MCP config, so you only set it up once.

Codex app
Codex CLI & IDE

Install the plugin

Or open Plugins in the ChatGPT desktop app, search for Tavily, and select +. The same plugin also works in ChatGPT chats.

Connect

When prompted, connect Tavily and sign in to your Tavily account.

Try it

Start a new Codex chat and ask, or type @ to pick Tavily:

Use Tavily to find the latest docs for a dependency in this repo, check our usage against the installed version, and cite the source.

Add the server

codex mcp add tavily --url https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/

Codex detects OAuth and opens your browser to sign in to Tavily. To sign in again later, run codex mcp login tavily.Or add it to ~/.codex/config.toml yourself, then run codex mcp login tavily:

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.tavily]
url = "https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/"

To scope Tavily to one repository, use .codex/config.toml in a trusted project instead.

Verify

Run codex mcp list, or /mcp inside a Codex session, and confirm tavily is listed. The IDE extension and desktop app pick up the same server.

Try it

Use Tavily to research how other projects handle rate limiting for this API client, then propose a change and cite the sources.

What you get

Tool	What it does
`tavily_search`	Search the web
`tavily_extract`	Extract clean content from URLs
`tavily_map`	Discover a site’s URLs
`tavily_crawl`	Crawl multiple pages from a site
`tavily_research`	Run multi-source research with citations

The plugin also adds Tavily skills, such as tavily-research and tavily-best-practices, that guide Codex through multi-step work.

More options

Use an API key instead of OAuth

Export your Tavily API key as TAVILY_API_KEY in the environment Codex runs in, then add the server with:

codex mcp add tavily --url https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/ --bearer-token-env-var TAVILY_API_KEY

Or in config.toml:

[mcp_servers.tavily]
url = "https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/"
bearer_token_env_var = "TAVILY_API_KEY"

Use keyless access

For limited Search and Extract without an account:

[mcp_servers.tavily]
url = "https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/"
http_headers = { "X-Tavily-Access-Mode" = "keyless" }

See keyless access.

Run the MCP server locally

Requires Node.js 20+ and a Tavily API key:

codex mcp add tavily-local --env TAVILY_API_KEY=YOUR_TAVILY_API_KEY -- npx -y tavily-mcp@latest

Use the CLI and Agent Skills instead of MCP

Install the Tavily CLI, sign in, and add the Agent Skills to your project:

curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash
tvly login
npx skills add tavily-ai/skills --skill '*' --agent codex

Start a new session to load them. Add --global to install them for all projects.

Troubleshooting

The plugin doesn’t show up in the IDE extension. The IDE extension doesn’t support plugins. Use the MCP server, which the extension reads from config.toml.
Tavily tools don’t appear after installing the plugin. Start a new chat. Plugins load at the start of a chat or session.
tavily isn’t authenticated. Run codex mcp login tavily. With bearer_token_env_var, check that TAVILY_API_KEY is set where Codex runs.
The project .codex/config.toml is ignored. Codex reads project config only in trusted projects.
OAuth uses the wrong key. Tavily uses the key named mcp_auth_default, so rename a key in the Tavily dashboard. See API key selection.

Resources

Tavily plugin · skills repository
Codex plugin docs · Codex MCP docs
Tavily MCP server · Agent Skills · Tavily CLI

Get started

Coding agents

API keys & credits

Best practices

Help

What you get

More options

Troubleshooting

Resources

​What you get

​More options

​Troubleshooting

​Resources

What you get

More options

Troubleshooting

Resources