company-research

name	company-research
description	Company research using Exa search. Finds company info, competitors, news, financials, LinkedIn profiles, builds company lists. Use when researching companies, doing competitor analysis, market research, or building company lists. NOT for individual-person lookups (use /people-research).
allowed-tools	Task mcp__exa__web_search_advanced_exa

Company Research

Tool Restriction (Critical)

ONLY use web_search_advanced_exa. Do NOT use web_search_exa or any other Exa tools.

Token Isolation (Critical)

Never run Exa searches in main context. Always spawn Task agents:

• Agent runs Exa search internally
• Agent processes results using LLM intelligence
• Agent returns only distilled output (compact JSON or brief markdown)
• Main context stays clean regardless of search volume

Dynamic Tuning

No hardcoded numResults. Tune to user intent:

• User says "a few" → 10-20
• User says "comprehensive" → 50-100
• User specifies number → match it
• Ambiguous? Ask: "How many companies would you like?"

Query Variation

Exa returns different results for different phrasings. For coverage:

• Generate 2-3 query variations
• Run in parallel
• Merge and deduplicate

Categories

Use appropriate Exa category depending on what you need:

• company → homepages, rich metadata (headcount, location, funding, revenue)
• news → press coverage, announcements
• people → LinkedIn profiles (public data)
• No category (type: "auto") → general web results, deep dives, broader context

Start with category: "company" for discovery, then use other categories or no category for deeper research.

Category-Specific Filter Restrictions

When using category: "company", these parameters cause 400 errors:

• includeDomains / excludeDomains
• startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate
• startCrawlDate / endCrawlDate

When searching without a category (or with news), domain and date filters work fine.

Universal restriction: includeText and excludeText only support single-item arrays. Multi-item arrays cause 400 errors across all categories.

LinkedIn

Public LinkedIn via Exa: category: "people", no other filters. Auth-required LinkedIn → use Claude in Chrome browser fallback.

Browser Fallback

Auto-fallback to Claude in Chrome when:

• Exa returns insufficient results
• Content is auth-gated
• Dynamic pages need JavaScript

Examples

Discovery: find companies in a space

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "AI infrastructure startups San Francisco",
  "category": "company",
  "numResults": 20,
  "type": "auto"
}

Deep dive: research a specific company

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Anthropic funding rounds valuation 2024",
  "type": "deep",
  "numResults": 10,
  "includeDomains": ["techcrunch.com", "crunchbase.com", "bloomberg.com"]
}

News coverage

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Anthropic AI safety",
  "category": "news",
  "numResults": 15,
  "startPublishedDate": "2024-01-01"
}

LinkedIn profiles

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "VP Engineering AI infrastructure",
  "category": "people",
  "numResults": 20
}

Output Format

Return:

1. Results (structured list; one company per row)
2. Sources (URLs; 1-line relevance each)
3. Notes (uncertainty/conflicts)