Exa Search

On Activation

1. Read brand/positioning.md, brand/competitors.md, and brand/landscape.md if present. Use them to sharpen queries and exclusions. All optional - works at zero brand context.
2. Confirm Exa auth: Exa MCP connected, or EXA_API_KEY set (mktg doctor --json --fields integrations). If neither, stop and surface: get a key at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys then export EXA_API_KEY=....
3. Prefer MCP tools when present; otherwise use the cURL examples below.
4. After discovery, chain firecrawl or exa-contents only when a known URL needs deeper extraction.

Exa Search

Requires API key: Get one at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys

Header: x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY

Use POST https://api.exa.ai/search for semantic web retrieval, ranked results, and optional result-level extraction in one raw HTTP call. Start with type: "auto" for general retrieval. Add contents only when the caller needs page text, highlights, summaries, freshness-controlled crawling, subpages, or extracted links.

Quick Start (cURL)

Basic search

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "latest developments in LLMs",
    "type": "auto",
    "numResults": 10
  }'

Search with highlights

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "latest developments in LLMs",
    "type": "auto",
    "numResults": 5,
    "contents": {
      "highlights": true
    }
  }'

With filters and freshness

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "AI regulation policy updates",
    "type": "auto",
    "category": "news",
    "numResults": 10,
    "includeDomains": ["reuters.com", "bbc.com"],
    "startPublishedDate": "2025-01-01",
    "contents": {
      "text": {
        "maxCharacters": 2000
      },
      "maxAgeHours": 24,
      "livecrawlTimeout": 12000
    }
  }'

Deep search

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "map the major technical and commercial tradeoffs in sodium-ion batteries for grid storage",
    "type": "deep",
    "numResults": 8
  }'

Endpoint

POST https://api.exa.ai/search

Authentication: x-api-key: <API_KEY> header. Exa also accepts Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>, but prefer x-api-key in cURL examples for consistency.

Use this endpoint when the agent needs search results. If the agent already has URLs and only needs extraction, use POST /contents instead.

Parameters

Core request parameters

Content parameters nested under contents

On /search, text, highlights, and summary must be nested under contents.

Text object options

Highlights object options

Prefer contents.highlights: true for the highest-quality default. Only use object form when the agent needs a custom focus or budget.

Summary object options

Search Types

Search type controls the retrieval and synthesis mode. Pick the mode for the workflow, not just the output format. outputSchema can be used with any search type; use deeper modes when the search process itself needs more planning, synthesis, or reasoning.

Use auto unless latency or reasoning depth is the primary constraint. Use fast or instant for time-sensitive calls. Use deep, deep-lite, or deep-reasoning when the query needs multi-step source discovery, comparison, or synthesis.

Mode-only examples

{
  "query": "recent product launches from major AI chip companies",
  "type": "fast",
  "numResults": 5
}

{
  "query": "compare competing explanations for the recent rise in grid-scale battery deployments",
  "type": "deep",
  "numResults": 8
}

Structured Output

Use systemPrompt for behavior and outputSchema for shape.

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "compare the latest frontier AI model releases",
    "type": "deep",
    "systemPrompt": "Prefer official sources and avoid duplicate results.",
    "outputSchema": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "models": {
          "type": "array",
          "items": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
              "name": { "type": "string" },
              "notable_claims": {
                "type": "array",
                "items": { "type": "string" }
              }
            },
            "required": ["name", "notable_claims"]
          }
        }
      },
      "required": ["models"]
    },
    "contents": {
      "highlights": true
    }
  }'

Keep schemas compact and bounded. Do not add citation fields to the schema; grounding is returned separately in output.grounding.

Streaming

Streaming applies to synthesized output, so include outputSchema along with -N, Accept: text/event-stream, and stream: true. Without outputSchema, the endpoint returns the normal JSON search response even when stream is true.

curl -sS -N -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: text/event-stream" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "recent grid-scale battery deployments",
    "type": "deep",
    "stream": true,
    "outputSchema": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "summary": { "type": "string" }
      },
      "required": ["summary"]
    },
    "contents": {
      "highlights": true
    }
  }'

Treat streaming as SSE rather than JSON. Each data: frame contains an OpenAI-compatible chat completion chunk; read partial text from choices[0].delta.content and handle completion or error frames defensively.

Response Fields

Anti-Patterns

• Keep text, highlights, and summary inside contents on /search.
• Do not send top-level text, highlights, or summary; that shape belongs to /contents.
• Do not send tokensNum; use contents.text.maxCharacters to cap extracted text.
• Do not use useAutoprompt, numSentences, or highlightsPerUrl in new requests.
• Prefer contents.maxAgeHours over older livecrawl examples.
• Use documented categories only: company, people, research paper, news, personal site, and financial report.
• Avoid invalid category/filter combinations. company and people do not support startPublishedDate or endPublishedDate. company supports excludeDomains; people does not, and people only accepts LinkedIn domains in includeDomains.
• Pick one of contents.highlights, contents.text, or contents.summary by default. Stack modes only when the caller truly needs multiple views of each page.
• Expect SSE only when stream: true is paired with outputSchema; otherwise /search returns its normal JSON response.

Attribution

Ported from exa-labs/agent-skills - adapted for mktg's drop-in contract on 2026-07-18.

Upstream commit: 390ffee2d7e1d0dce2ed8efe4994c2b3c1c0173b

Drift detection: if the upstream skill changes, re-run mktg-steal https://github.com/exa-labs/agent-skills to evaluate the diff.