| name | exa-search |
| description | Semantic web search, similar page discovery, and content extraction via Exa AI API. Use when the user needs meaning-based search (not keyword matching), wants to find pages similar to a URL, or needs clean content extraction from web pages. Requires EXA_API_KEY environment variable. |
Exa Search
Exa is a semantic search engine built for AI. Unlike keyword search, Exa finds content by meaning using neural embeddings. It also provides clean content extraction and similarity search.
Prerequisites
Set the EXA_API_KEY environment variable. Get a key at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys
Available Tools
This package provides three tools:
exa_search
Semantic web search. Finds pages by meaning, not keywords.
Key parameters:
query — Natural language description of what you're looking for
type — auto (default), fast (sub-350ms), neural, deep (multi-step reasoning)
category — Filter: company, research paper, news, tweet, personal site, financial report
includeDomains / excludeDomains — Domain filtering
startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate — Date range (ISO 8601)
includeText — Get full page text
includeSummary — Get AI-generated summary
includeHighlights — Get relevant excerpts (default: true)
numResults — Result count (default: 10, max: 100)
exa_find_similar
Find pages semantically similar to a given URL. Good for competitor analysis, related content, and "more like this" discovery.
Key parameters:
url — The URL to find similar pages for
numResults, includeDomains, excludeDomains, date filters — Same as search
excludeText — Exclude results containing specific text
exa_get_contents
Extract clean, parsed content from one or more URLs. More reliable than raw scraping.
Key parameters:
urls — Array of URLs to extract
includeText — Full page text (default: true)
includeSummary — AI summary
includeHighlights — Key excerpts
maxTextCharacters — Max characters per page (default: 5000)
When to Use Each Tool
| Goal | Tool | Tip |
|---|
| Find content about a topic | exa_search | Use category to narrow results |
| Research with reasoning | exa_search with type: "deep" | Best for complex questions |
| Quick lookup | exa_search with type: "fast" | Sub-350ms responses |
| Find competitors/alternatives | exa_find_similar | Pass the company's URL |
| Get page content cleanly | exa_get_contents | Batch multiple URLs |
| Find related articles | exa_find_similar | Pass the article URL |
Examples
Search for research papers
exa_search("transformer architecture improvements 2024", {
category: "research paper",
numResults: 5,
includeHighlights: true,
includeSummary: true
})
Find companies similar to a competitor
exa_find_similar("https://stripe.com", {
numResults: 10,
includeSummary: true,
category: "company"
})
Extract content from multiple pages
exa_get_contents({
urls: ["https://example.com/article1", "https://example.com/article2"],
includeText: true,
maxTextCharacters: 3000
})