Exa People Research

People Research (Exa)

Tool

Use exec to call: mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa <params>

Critical Rules

• Never run searches in main context. Spawn subagents or run sequentially.
• Query variation: 2-3 phrasings, run in parallel, deduplicate.
• Dynamic numResults: "a few" → 10-20, "comprehensive" → 50-100.

Categories

Restrictions with category=people

Do NOT use: startPublishedDate, endPublishedDate, startCrawlDate, endCrawlDate, excludeDomains, includeText, excludeText. includeDomains → LinkedIn only: ["linkedin.com"].

Call Syntax

# Find people by role
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="VP Engineering AI infrastructure" \
  category=people \
  numResults=20 \
  type=auto

# Deep dive on specific person
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO background" \
  type=auto \
  livecrawl=fallback \
  numResults=15

# News mentions
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Dario Amodei interview 2024" \
  category=news \
  numResults=10 \
  startPublishedDate=2024-01-01

# LinkedIn only
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Machine learning engineer San Francisco" \
  category=people \
  includeDomains='["linkedin.com"]' \
  numResults=25

Output Format

Return:

1. Results — name, title, company, location (if available)
2. Sources — profile URLs
3. Notes — profile completeness, verification status

Browser Fallback

If content is auth-gated (private LinkedIn, etc.) → use browser tool with logged-in session.