0xrichardh/exa-search

Exa Search

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

Setup

Requires EXA_API_KEY environment variable (get one at exa.ai).

Config is in mcporter.json at the skill directory. Verify with:

npx mcporter list exa --config "${SKILL_DIR}/mcporter.json" --schema

Tools

All commands use --config "${SKILL_DIR}/mcporter.json" --output json.

web_search_exa

General web search. Use for most queries.

npx mcporter call exa.web_search_exa query="natural language query" numResults:5 --config "${SKILL_DIR}/mcporter.json" --output json

Query style: Describe the ideal page, not keywords. "blog post comparing React and Vue performance" not "React vs Vue".

Use category:people or category:company prefix for LinkedIn/company searches.

web_search_advanced_exa

Use when you need filters: domains, dates, categories, or content options.

Key filters:

• includeDomains / excludeDomains — domain filtering
• startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate — ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• category — "company", "research paper", "news", "pdf", "github", "people", etc.
• enableHighlights / enableSummary — richer content extraction

get_code_context_exa

Use for code examples, API docs, and programming solutions.

npx mcporter call exa.get_code_context_exa query="React useState hook examples" numResults:5 --config "${SKILL_DIR}/mcporter.json" --output json

Query style: Be specific. "Python requests library POST with JSON body" not "python http".

Tool Selection

| Need | Tool | |------|------| | Quick answer | web_search_exa with numResults:3-5 | | Code/API docs | get_code_context_exa | | Domain/date filters | web_search_advanced_exa | | Company research | web_search_advanced_exa with category:"company" | | People search | web_search_advanced_exa with category:"people" | | Research papers | web_search_advanced_exa with category:"research paper" |

Gotchas

• EXA_API_KEY is required — the server returns 401 without it
• Use natural language queries, not keyword-style — Exa is semantic search
• numResults max is 100 for web_search_exa, 20 for get_code_context_exa
• includeDomains takes a JSON array string: '["github.com","react.dev"]'
• Results include highlights by default; use enableSummary for AI summaries