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tavily-mcp tool descriptions scored F-31 on automated MCP quality scan #141

@0xzoz

Description

@0xzoz

Running an open catalog scan across popular MCP servers. tavily-mcp came back F-31 — main issues: search tool missing result_count param description, extract tool has no output schema context.

Full report:

Tavily MCP — Twig Audit

Tool Description Issues
tavily_search "Search the web for current information..." ✅ Decent. Missing: when to prefer over tavily_research; no mention of latency tradeoff
tavily_extract "Extract content from URLs." ❌ 19 chars. Catastrophically short. No output context, no error states
tavily_crawl "Crawl a website starting from a URL." ❌ No output context, no use-case differentiation from extract
tavily_map "Map a website" ❌ 3 words. Zero information. Agents will never call this
tavily_research "Perform comprehensive research..." ⚠️ OK but no differentiation from tavily_search

Score: D-38 / 100

Tavily MCP — Twig Score: D (38/100)

🔍 Analyzing: tavily-mcp (v0.2.18, 5 tools)

tavily_search C+ Description adequate but missing: when to prefer
over tavily_research, no latency/cost tradeoff guidance.

tavily_extract F "Extract content from URLs." — 29 chars. No output
format context, no error states, no guidance on when
basic vs advanced extraction is appropriate.

tavily_crawl F "Crawl a website starting from a URL." — 37 chars.
No output schema context. Agents can't distinguish
from tavily_extract based on description alone.

tavily_map F "Map a website" — 14 chars. Agents will skip this
entirely. No output type, no use case, nothing.

tavily_research C Description functional but no differentiation from
tavily_search — agents will guess between them.

SCORE: 38/100 (D)

Issues: 3 tools with near-zero descriptions, 0 tools with routing guidance between overlapping capabilities.

Just sharing the data. Happy to discuss if useful.

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