joemccann 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 fortype—auto(default),fast(sub-350ms),neural,deep(multi-step reasoning)category— Filter:company,research paper,news,tweet,personal site,financial reportincludeDomains/excludeDomains— Domain filteringstartPublishedDate/endPublishedDate— Date range (ISO 8601)includeText— Get full page textincludeSummary— Get AI-generated summaryincludeHighlights— 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 fornumResults,includeDomains,excludeDomains, date filters — Same as searchexcludeText— 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 extractincludeText— Full page text (default: true)includeSummary— AI summaryincludeHighlights— Key excerptsmaxTextCharacters— 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
})