Exa Search Skill

Trigger Conditions & Endpoint Selection

Choose Exa endpoint based on user intent:

• search: Need semantic search / find web pages / research topics

• contents: Given result IDs, need to extract full content

• findsimilar: Given URL, need to find similar pages

• answer: Need direct answer to a question

• research: Need structured research output following given output_schema

Recommended Architecture (Main Skill + Sub-skill)

This skill uses a two-phase architecture:

• Main skill (current context): Understand user question → Choose endpoint → Assemble JSON payload

• Sub-skill (fork context): Only responsible for HTTP call execution, avoiding conversation history token waste

Execution Method

Use Task tool to invoke exa-fetcher sub-skill, passing command and JSON (stdin):

Task parameters:

- subagent_type: Bash

- description: "Call Exa API"

- prompt: cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs <search|contents|findsimilar|answer|research>

  { ...payload... }

  JSON

Payload Examples

1) Search

cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs search

{

  "query": "Latest research in LLMs",

  "type": "auto",

  "numResults": 10,

  "category": "research paper",

  "includeDomains": [],

  "excludeDomains": [],

  "startPublishedDate": "2025-01-01",

  "endPublishedDate": "2025-12-31",

  "includeText": [],

  "excludeText": [],

  "context": true,

  "contents": {

    "text": true,

    "highlights": true,

    "summary": true

  }

}

JSON

Search Types:

• neural: Semantic search using embeddings

• fast: Quick keyword-based search

• auto: Automatically choose best method (default)

• deep: Comprehensive deep search

Categories:

• company, people, research paper, news, pdf, github, tweet, etc.

2) Contents

cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs contents

{

  "ids": ["result-id-1", "result-id-2"],

  "text": true,

  "highlights": true,

  "summary": true

}

JSON

3) Find Similar

cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs findsimilar

{

  "url": "https://example.com/article",

  "numResults": 10,

  "category": "news",

  "includeDomains": [],

  "excludeDomains": [],

  "startPublishedDate": "2025-01-01",

  "contents": {

    "text": true,

    "summary": true

  }

}

JSON

4) Answer

cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs answer

{

  "query": "What is the capital of France?",

  "numResults": 5,

  "includeDomains": [],

  "excludeDomains": []

}

JSON

5) Research

cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs research

{

  "input": "What are the latest developments in AI?",

  "model": "auto",

  "stream": false,

  "output_schema": {

    "properties": {

      "topic": {

        "type": "string",

        "description": "The main topic"

      },

      "key_findings": {

        "type": "array",

        "description": "List of key findings",

        "items": {

          "type": "string"

        }

      }

    },

    "required": ["topic"]

  },

  "citation_format": "numbered"

}

JSON

Environment Variables & API Key

Two ways to configure API Key (priority: environment variable > .env):

• Environment variable: EXA_API_KEY

• .env file: Place in .claude/skills/exa-search/.env, can copy from .env.example

Response Format

All endpoints return JSON with:

• requestId: Unique request identifier

• results: Array of search results

• searchType: Type of search performed (for search endpoint)

• context: LLM-friendly context string (if requested)

• costDollars: Detailed cost breakdown