| name | exa-people-research |
| description | Find people with Exa semantic search — by role, company, and location, LinkedIn-weighted. Use to map a company's team, find experts/decision-makers, locate a specific person, or build people lists. Runs a local script against the Exa API; no MCP server required. |
| license | MIT |
People Research (Exa)
Find people via Exa's LinkedIn-weighted index — by company + role, role + location, or a named individual. Calls the Exa REST API through a local script; no MCP server needed, only an EXA_API_KEY.
Setup (once)
export EXA_API_KEY=your-key
Get a key at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys. Shared details: exa-native-base.
Run it
python scripts/people_research.py "<role + company/location>" [-n N] [--json]
Examples:
python scripts/people_research.py "engineer at OpenAI" -n 10
python scripts/people_research.py "Head of Growth B2B SaaS startup San Francisco" -n 12
python scripts/people_research.py "Jane Smith Anthropic machine learning" -n 5
Defaults to category=linkedin profile. Be specific — vague queries like "researcher founder CEO startup" match many irrelevant profiles. Always include a concrete company, timeframe, role, or location.
Token isolation (for team maps / lists)
For comprehensive coverage, dispatch subagents in parallel and merge. Search by department + seniority in parallel rather than one broad query:
python scripts/people_research.py "category:people engineering at Acme" -n 10
python scripts/people_research.py "category:people product design at Acme" -n 10
python scripts/people_research.py "category:people sales marketing at Acme" -n 10
Supplement LinkedIn with non-LinkedIn sources (use exa-native-base's generic exa.py):
python ../exa-native-base/scripts/exa.py search "Acme team page employees about us" -n 5
python ../exa-native-base/scripts/exa.py search "joined Acme recently hired new role announcement" -n 5
Deduplicate by LinkedIn URL (canonical), or by name + current company as a fallback.
Override categories with -c
linkedin profile (default) · personal site (their own writing) · news (press mentions). For outbound prospect lists that start from companies, use exa-lead-generation.
After you get results
- Results are similarity, not validation — confirm role/company from the snippet before reporting.
- Deep-read a profile or bio page:
python ../exa-native-base/scripts/exa.py contents <url> --text.
- Deliver a table: name · current role · company · location · LinkedIn URL.
