exa-migration-deep-dive

name	exa-migration-deep-dive
description	Migrate from other search APIs (Google, Bing, Tavily, Serper) to Exa neural search. Use when switching to Exa from another search provider, migrating search pipelines, or evaluating Exa as a replacement for traditional search APIs. Trigger with phrases like "migrate to exa", "switch to exa", "replace google search with exa", "exa vs tavily", "exa migration", "move to exa".
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Bash(npm:*), Bash(node:*)
version	1.11.0
license	MIT
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
tags	["saas","exa","migration"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code, also compatible with Codex and OpenClaw

Exa Migration Deep Dive

Current State

!npm list exa-js 2>/dev/null | grep exa-js || echo 'exa-js not installed' !npm list 2>/dev/null | grep -E '(google|bing|tavily|serper|serpapi)' || echo 'No competing search SDK found'

Overview

Migrate from traditional search APIs (Google Custom Search, Bing Web Search, Tavily, Serper) to Exa's neural search API. Key differences: Exa uses semantic/neural search instead of keyword matching, returns content (text/highlights/summary) in a single API call, and supports similarity search from a seed URL.

API Comparison

Feature	Google/Bing	Tavily	Exa
Search model	Keyword	AI-enhanced	Neural embeddings
Content in results	Snippets only	Full text	Text + highlights + summary
Similarity search	No	No	findSimilar() by URL
AI answer	No	Yes	answer() + streamAnswer()
Categories	No	No	company, news, research paper, tweet, people
Date filtering	Limited	Yes	startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate
Domain filtering	Yes	Yes	includeDomains / excludeDomains (up to 1200)

Instructions

Step 1: Install Exa SDK

set -euo pipefail
npm install exa-js
# Remove old SDK if replacing
# npm uninstall google-search-api tavily serpapi

Step 2: Create Adapter Layer

// src/search/adapter.ts
import Exa from "exa-js";

// Define a provider-agnostic search interface
interface  {
  : ;
  : ;
  : ;
  ?: ;
  ?: ;
}

  {
  : [];
  : ;
}


  {
   : ;

  () {
    . =  (apiKey);
  }

   (: , numResults = ): <> {
     response =  ..(query, {
      : ,
      numResults,
      : { :  },
      : { : , query },
    });

     {
      query,
      : response..( ({
        : r. || ,
        : r.,
        : r.?.() || r.?.(, ) || ,
        : r.,
        : r. || ,
      })),
    };
  }

  
   (: , numResults = ): <> {
     response =  ..(url, {
      numResults,
      : { :  },
      : ,
    });

     {
      : url,
      : response..( ({
        : r. || ,
        : r.,
        : r.?.(, ) || ,
        : r.,
      })),
    };
  }
}