Exa Search Skill

Trigger Conditions & Endpoint Selection

Choose Exa endpoint based on user intent:

search

Need semantic search / find web pages / research topics

contents

Given result IDs, need to extract full content

findsimilar

Given URL, need to find similar pages

answer

Need direct answer to a question

research

Need structured research output following given

output_schema

Recommended Architecture (Main Skill + Sub-skill)

This skill uses a two-phase architecture:

Main skill (current context)

Understand user question → Choose endpoint → Assemble JSON payload

Sub-skill (fork context)

Only responsible for HTTP call execution, avoiding conversation history token waste

Execution Method

Use Task tool to invoke

exa-fetcher

sub-skill, passing command and JSON (stdin):

Task parameters:

- subagent_type: Bash

- description: "Call Exa API"

- prompt: cat <<'JSON' | node .claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs

{ ...payload... }

JSON

Payload Examples

1) Search

cat

<<

'JSON'

|

node

.claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs search

{

"query": "Latest research in LLMs",

"type": "auto",

"numResults": 10,

"category": "research paper",

"includeDomains": [],

"excludeDomains": [],

"startPublishedDate": "2025-01-01",

"endPublishedDate": "2025-12-31",

"includeText": [],

"excludeText": [],

"context": true,

"contents": {

"text": true,

"highlights": true,

"summary": true

}

}

JSON

Search Types:

neural

Semantic search using embeddings

fast

Quick keyword-based search

auto

Automatically choose best method (default)

deep

Comprehensive deep search

Categories:

company

,

people

,

research paper

,

news

,

pdf

,

github

,

tweet

, etc.

2) Contents

cat

<<

'JSON'

|

node

.claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs contents

{

"ids": ["result-id-1", "result-id-2"],

"text": true,

"highlights": true,

"summary": true

}

JSON

3) Find Similar

cat

<<

'JSON'

|

node

.claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs findsimilar

{

"url": "https://example.com/article",

"numResults": 10,

"category": "news",

"includeDomains": [],

"excludeDomains": [],

"startPublishedDate": "2025-01-01",

"contents": {

"text": true,

"summary": true

}

}

JSON

4) Answer

cat

<<

'JSON'

|

node

.claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs answer

{

"query": "What is the capital of France?",

"numResults": 5,

"includeDomains": [],

"excludeDomains": []

}

JSON

5) Research

cat

<<

'JSON'

|

node

.claude/skills/exa-search/exa-api.cjs research

{

"input": "What are the latest developments in AI?",

"model": "auto",

"stream": false,

"output_schema": {

"properties": {

"topic": {

"type": "string",

"description": "The main topic"

},

"key_findings": {

"type": "array",

"description": "List of key findings",

"items": {

"type": "string"

}

}

},

"required": ["topic"]

},

"citation_format": "numbered"

}

JSON

Environment Variables & API Key

Two ways to configure API Key (priority: environment variable >

.env

):

Environment variable:

EXA_API_KEY

.env

file: Place in

.claude/skills/exa-search/.env

, can copy from

.env.example

Response Format

All endpoints return JSON with:

requestId

Unique request identifier

results

Array of search results

searchType

Type of search performed (for search endpoint)

context

LLM-friendly context string (if requested)

costDollars

Detailed cost breakdown