Exa Web Search

AI-powered semantic web search for real-time information, research, and fact verification.

When to Use

Use Exa when you need to:

• Verify facts or clear doubts with current web sources
• Debug errors by searching for solutions and stack traces
• Research topics with up-to-date information
• Find code examples, tutorials, and implementation patterns
• Get AI-generated answers with citations to authoritative sources
• Discover similar pages or find related content
• Search for companies, people, research papers, or news

Protocol

Step 1: Web Search

scripts/exa.sh search "<query>" [numResults] [category]

Categories: company, research paper, news, pdf, github, tweet, personal site, people

Example:

scripts/exa.sh search "latest LLM research papers on context windows" 5 "research paper"

Step 2: Get Page Contents (optional)

scripts/exa.sh contents "<url1>" ["<url2>" ...]

Example:

scripts/exa.sh contents "https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.06435"

Step 3: Find Similar Pages

scripts/exa.sh similar "<url>" [numResults]

Example:

scripts/exa.sh similar "https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-cookbook" 5

Step 4: Get AI Answer with Citations

scripts/exa.sh answer "<question>"

Example:

scripts/exa.sh answer "What is the current valuation of SpaceX?"

Step 5: Search Code Context

scripts/exa.sh code "<programming query>"

Example:

scripts/exa.sh code "React useCallback hook examples with TypeScript"

Critical Rules

1. Specific queries win - "React useState TypeScript patterns" beats "react hooks"
2. Include error messages - For debugging, include the actual error text in query
3. Use categories - Append category for better results (research paper, github, news)
4. Verify with answer - Use answer command to get fact-checked responses with citations
5. Current year is 2026 - Use this when recency matters; omit for timeless topics or use older years when historically relevant
6. No guessing - If search returns nothing, ask user before proceeding

Resources

See reference/troubleshooting.md for error handling, configuration, and common issues.