Tavily

Tavily is a web search API tuned for AI agents. Phyllax uses it as one of the two web-search providers (the other is Brave). It's required for Deep Research — the multi-tool, multi-step research mode in the AI chat.

Quick Setup

1. Go to tavily.com → Sign up
2. Copy your API key from the dashboard
3. In Phyllax → Integrations → Tavily → paste the key → Save

Generous free tier

Tavily's free tier covers ~1,000 searches/month — comfortably enough for personal Deep Research use. Paid plans start at $30/month for high-volume use.

Required Credentials

Field	Where to find it
API Key	tavily.com dashboard → API Keys

What Phyllax Uses Tavily For

Mode	What it does
Deep Research	Multi-step web research. The AI plans queries, fetches results, follows up on partial findings, and synthesizes a final answer with citations.
AI Chat web lookups	When the assistant needs to look up something current ("what's the latest on the LinkedIn API?"), it routes through Tavily.
Phyllax Research schedules	Cross-tool monitoring schedules can include "trending topic" lookups that hit Tavily for context.

Tavily vs Brave Search

Phyllax supports both. The trade-offs:

	Tavily	Brave Search
Tuned for AI agents	✓	—
Returns clean, summarized results	✓	Raw results
Free tier	~1k searches/mo	2k searches/mo
Best for	Deep Research, AI chat lookups	Simple "what's the URL of X" lookups

You can have both configured — Phyllax routes Deep Research to Tavily by default and falls back to Brave if Tavily fails.

Troubleshooting

"API key invalid"

Re-check the key in Tavily's dashboard. Keys are revocable; if you regenerated, paste the new value.

"Rate limited"

Free tier limits are per-minute as well as monthly. If you hit a burst, Phyllax retries with backoff. If you hit your monthly cap, upgrade or wait until reset.

Deep Research never finds anything

Check that Tavily is connected (green dot). Without it, Deep Research falls back to less-thorough single-shot search via Brave.