Cursor

Give Cursor current web sources for coding, research, and documentation tasks. Install the full Tavily plugin (recommended), or use a standalone remote MCP server, local MCP server, or CLI and Agent Skills. The plugin bundles Tavily’s MCP connection, skills, and commands. Standalone MCP adds tools directly; standalone skills guide Cursor in using the Tavily CLI from its terminal.

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Install the plugin (recommended)

Start with Cursor installed and a Tavily account.

1. Open Customize in Cursor, find the official Tavily plugin, and install it. You can also enter /add-plugin tavily in chat.
2. Choose Add for Myself for personal use or Add to Project for the current project. You can manage this scope from the plugin’s dropdown.
   
3. On the Tavily plugin page, find tavily under MCPs and click Authenticate.
   
4. Complete Tavily’s sign-in flow in your browser, then return to Cursor. Confirm that the MCP connection no longer needs authentication and its tools are available.
   
5. Click Try in Chat, or open an Agent chat in your workspace. Ask Cursor to use Tavily and approve the tool call if prompted.

The plugin uses MCP for web tasks. If you need its terminal fallback, run /tavily-setup to set up the CLI. See the plugin repository for available skills and commands.

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Example usage

With your project open, try:

Use the Tavily plugin in one concrete, useful way that shows why it’s valuable in this workspace.

Cursor can inspect the project, choose a relevant research task, and apply what it learns. For a more specific coding task:

Use Tavily to find the official documentation for a dependency used in this workspace. Check one API usage against the installed version, fix it if needed, and cite the source.

Or, in a Next.js app:

Use Tavily to find three AI product announcements from the past seven days. Add a “Latest AI News” section to the homepage with a title, one-sentence summary, date, and source link for each. Match the existing design.

Look for Tavily tool calls and source links in the response to confirm it used web results.

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Standalone setup

Choose one of these options if you only need individual components. The plugin already includes the remote MCP connection.

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Remote MCP server

Use Tavily’s hosted server without installing the plugin or running a local server.

1. Create or edit .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all projects. Merge this entry into any existing mcpServers object:
   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "tavily": {
         "url": "https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp"
       }
     }
   }
   
2. Open Customize, enable the Tavily MCP server, and complete Authenticate in your browser.
3. In Agent chat, ask: “Use Tavily to find the latest documentation for this project’s framework and cite the sources.”

For API-key authentication instead of OAuth, add an Authorization header with the value Bearer YOUR_TAVILY_API_KEY. Cursor supports environment-variable interpolation so you can keep the key outside the config file. For limited Search and Extract access without signing in, add "headers": {"X-Tavily-Access-Mode": "keyless"} to the server entry instead. See keyless access for limits and supported tools.

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Local MCP server

Run the Tavily MCP package on your machine. It still calls Tavily’s API.

1. Install Node.js 20 or later and copy a Tavily API key.
2. Add this entry to your personal ~/.cursor/mcp.json, replacing the placeholder with your key. This file configures the server across your projects.
   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "tavily-local": {
         "type": "stdio",
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "tavily-mcp@latest"],
         "env": {
           "TAVILY_API_KEY": "YOUR_TAVILY_API_KEY"
         }
       }
     }
   }
   
3. In Customize, enable tavily-local and confirm its tools load. Ask Cursor to search with Tavily.

For project-scoped configuration, use .cursor/mcp.json and supply credentials through environment variables or an ignored environment file.

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CLI and Agent Skills

Use this option when Cursor should run Tavily commands in its terminal. Install Node.js 22.20 or later for the skills installer.

1. Install the Tavily CLI:
   curl -fsSL https://cli.tavily.com/install.sh | bash
   
2. Run tvly login and complete browser sign-in. OAuth login requires Node.js and npx; you can also authenticate with TAVILY_API_KEY.
3. From your project, install the Tavily Agent Skills:
   npx skills add tavily-ai/skills --skill '*' --agent cursor
   
4. Complete the install prompts, then restart your Cursor agent session to load the skills. Add --global to the install command if you want the skills across projects. Try: “Use the Tavily CLI to search for this framework’s latest migration guide and summarize the changes relevant to this project.”

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Resources

• Tavily plugin on Cursor Marketplace
• Tavily Cursor plugin repository
• Cursor plugin documentation
• Cursor MCP documentation
• Tavily MCP server
• Tavily Agent Skills and CLI