people-research

name	people-research
description	People research using Exa search. Finds LinkedIn profiles, professional backgrounds, experts, team members, and public bios across the web. Use when searching for people, finding experts, or looking up professional profiles. NOT for company-level research (use /company-research); defers to /contact when the person is already a known internal contact.
allowed-tools	Task mcp__exa__web_search_advanced_exa

People 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 profiles 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:

• people → LinkedIn profiles, public bios (primary for discovery)
• personal site → personal blogs, portfolio sites, about pages
• news → press mentions, interviews, speaker bios
• No category (type: "auto") → general web results, broader context

Start with category: "people" for profile discovery, then use other categories or no category for deeper research on specific individuals.

Category-Specific Filter Restrictions

When using category: "people", these parameters cause errors:

• startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate
• startCrawlDate / endCrawlDate
• includeText / excludeText
• excludeDomains
• includeDomains — LinkedIn domains only (e.g., "linkedin.com")

When searching without a category, all parameters are available (but includeText/excludeText still only support single-item arrays).

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 people by role

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

With query variations

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "machine learning engineer San Francisco",
  "category": "people",
  "additionalQueries": ["ML engineer SF", "AI engineer Bay Area"],
  "numResults": 25,
  "type": "deep"
}

Deep dive: research a specific person

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO background",
  "type": "auto",
  "numResults": 15
}

News mentions

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei interview",
  "category": "news",
  "numResults": 10,
  "startPublishedDate": "2024-01-01"
}

Output Format

Return:

1. Results (name, title, company, location if available)
2. Sources (Profile URLs)
3. Notes (profile completeness, verification status)