Exa Search

Drift-prone skill. Exa MCP tool names, parameters, and account limits can change. Confirm the exposed tool surface and current Exa docs before relying on a specific search mode, category, or livecrawl behavior.

Neural search for web content, code, companies, and people via the Exa MCP server.

When to Activate

• User needs current web information or news
• Searching for code examples, API docs, or technical references
• Researching companies, competitors, or market players
• Finding professional profiles or people in a domain
• Running background research for any development task
• User says "search for", "look up", "find", or "what's the latest on"

MCP Requirement

Exa MCP server must be configured. Add to ~/.claude.json:

"exa-web-search": {
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "exa-mcp-server"],
  "env": { "EXA_API_KEY": "YOUR_EXA_API_KEY_HERE" }
}

Get an API key at exa.ai. This repo's current Exa setup documents the tool surface exposed here: web_search_exa and get_code_context_exa. If your Exa server exposes additional tools, verify their exact names before depending on them in docs or prompts.

Core Tools

web_search_exa

General web search for current information, news, or facts.

web_search_exa(query: "latest AI developments 2026", numResults: 5)

Parameters:

Param	Type	Default	Notes
query	string	required	Search query
numResults	number	8	Number of results
type	string	auto	Search mode
livecrawl	string	fallback	Prefer live crawling when needed
category	string	none	Optional focus such as company or research paper

get_code_context_exa

Find code examples and documentation from GitHub, Stack Overflow, and docs sites.

get_code_context_exa(query: "Python asyncio patterns", tokensNum: 3000)

Parameters:

Param	Type	Default	Notes
query	string	required	Code or API search query
tokensNum	number	5000	Content tokens (1000-50000)

Usage Patterns

Quick Lookup

web_search_exa(query: "Node.js 22 new features", numResults: 3)

Code Research

get_code_context_exa(query: "Rust error handling patterns Result type", tokensNum: 3000)

Company or People Research

web_search_exa(query: "Vercel funding valuation 2026", numResults: 3, category: "company")
web_search_exa(query: "site:linkedin.com/in AI safety researchers Anthropic", numResults: 5)

Technical Deep Dive

web_search_exa(query: "WebAssembly component model status and adoption", numResults: 5)
get_code_context_exa(query: "WebAssembly component model examples", tokensNum: 4000)

Tips

• Use web_search_exa for current information, company lookups, and broad discovery
• Use search operators like site:, quoted phrases, and intitle: to narrow results
• Lower tokensNum (1000-2000) for focused code snippets, higher (5000+) for comprehensive context
• Use get_code_context_exa when you need API usage or code examples rather than general web pages

Related Skills

• deep-research — Full research workflow using firecrawl + exa together
• market-research — Business-oriented research with decision frameworks