Exa - Search + Research

Use this skill for web search, code-context search, URL content extraction, and async research workflows.

What This Skill Does

• Run Exa web search with optional category and domain filters.
• Retrieve full page content (and optional subpage crawling).
• Find code and docs context for programming queries.
• Run async research tasks (one-shot or create/poll workflows).
• Support optional structured outputs via outputSchema.

Setup

Set EXA_API_KEY using one of these methods.

export EXA_API_KEY="your-exa-api-key"

# .env next to SKILL.md
EXA_API_KEY=your-exa-api-key

Behavior: - If EXA_API_KEY is missing in the environment, scripts load only EXA_API_KEY from .env. - Other .env variables are ignored by the loader.

Safety and Data Handling

• SCHEMA_FILE content is sent to https://api.exa.ai/research/v1 as outputSchema.
• Never use sensitive local files for SCHEMA_FILE (for example: .env, key/cert files, secrets, internal confidential docs).
• research_create.sh blocks obvious sensitive paths/suffixes (for example: .env, .pem, .key, .p12, .pfx, id_rsa).

Command Quick Reference

Search

bash scripts/search.sh "query"

Main env vars: - NUM=10 (max 100) - TYPE=auto (auto, neural, fast, deep, instant) - CATEGORY= (company, research paper, news, tweet, personal site, financial report, people) - DOMAINS=domain1.com,domain2.com - EXCLUDE=domain1.com,domain2.com - SINCE=YYYY-MM-DD - UNTIL=YYYY-MM-DD - LOCATION=NL

Constraints: - EXCLUDE is not supported when CATEGORY=company or CATEGORY=people. - SINCE and UNTIL are not supported when CATEGORY=company or CATEGORY=people. - When CATEGORY=people, DOMAINS accepts LinkedIn domains only (linkedin.com, www.linkedin.com, *.linkedin.com).

Content Extraction

bash scripts/content.sh "url1" "url2"

Main env vars: - MAX_CHARACTERS=2000 - HIGHLIGHT_SENTENCES=3 - HIGHLIGHTS_PER_URL=2 - SUBPAGES=10 - SUBPAGE_TARGET="docs,reference,api" - LIVECRAWL=preferred (preferred, always, fallback) - LIVECRAWL_TIMEOUT=12000

Code Context Search

bash scripts/code.sh "query" [num_results]

Research (One-shot)

bash scripts/research.sh "instructions"

Main env vars: - MODEL=exa-research or MODEL=exa-research-pro - SCHEMA_FILE=path/to/schema.json - POLL_INTERVAL=2 - MAX_WAIT_SECONDS=240 - EVENTS=true

Research (Create/Poll)

bash scripts/research_create.sh "instructions" | jq
bash scripts/research_poll.sh "researchId" | jq

Agent Decision Rules

Choose TYPE for Search

Use this decision order: 1. User explicitly asks for realtime or autocomplete -> TYPE=instant. 2. Task needs broad coverage or deeper synthesis -> TYPE=deep. 3. User asks for speed/quality balance -> TYPE=fast. 4. Otherwise -> TYPE=auto (default).

Fallback/escalation: - If too slow or time-sensitive: deep -> auto -> fast -> instant. - If too shallow: instant -> fast -> auto -> deep. - Explicit user requirement always wins.

Recommended pattern:

TYPE=auto bash scripts/search.sh "query"

Common Pitfalls

• Do not pass sensitive files to SCHEMA_FILE.
• Do not combine CATEGORY=people|company with EXCLUDE, SINCE, or UNTIL.
• Prefer https://docs.exa.ai/ for subpage crawling seeds (more reliable than https://exa.ai/docs/reference/).

More Examples

See EXAMPLES.md for grouped command examples and edge-case workflows.