Exa web search
Exa web search as standalone Agent Skills — no MCP server, just an EXA_API_KEY. Company, people, papers, code, finance, personal-site & X search + lead generation for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, and any SKILL.md agent.
npx -y skills add CodeAlive-AI/exa-skills --skill exa-web-searchAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
2 things to look at
- no licenseNo license file was found in the repository. Code published without one is not open source by default, so using it at work is a question for whoever answers licensing questions where you are.
- 2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
General-purpose web search powered by Exa — the search_web / web_search analog. Use for any open-ended lookup, fact-finding, or 'search the web for X' when no specialized skill fits. Semantic (meaning-based) search over the whole index; runs a local script against the Exa API, no MCP server required.
The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.
SKILL.md
3.6 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
Web Search (Exa)
Plain semantic web search — the everyday search_web you reach for first. No category, no domain restriction: describe what you're looking for and Exa returns the closest pages. Calls the Exa REST API through a local script; no MCP server needed, only an EXA_API_KEY.
This skill is self-contained — its client (scripts/exa_client.py) is vendored, so you can install just this folder.
Install
Get a key first at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys, then:
export EXA_API_KEY=your-key # add to ~/.zshrc / ~/.bashrc to make it permanent
Just this skill (Claude Code):
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CodeAlive-AI/exa-skills /tmp/exa-skills
cp -r /tmp/exa-skills/exa-web-search ~/.claude/skills/exa-web-search # user-level
# …or .claude/skills/exa-web-search inside a project for project-level
That's the whole install — no other folders required. (Other agents: drop the exa-web-search folder wherever your agent discovers skills.)
Whole collection: clone the repo and point your agent at it — see the repo README.
Run it
python scripts/web_search.py "<what you're looking for>" [-n N] [--text] [--json]
Examples:
python scripts/web_search.py "how do vector databases handle deletes" -n 10
python scripts/web_search.py "best practices for prompt caching with LLMs" --text
python scripts/web_search.py "self-hosted analytics alternatives to Google Analytics" -n 12
Output is a Markdown list (title · date · snippet) ending in sources_reviewed: N. --text includes page content, --json gives raw results, -h lists all flags.
Write queries that describe the page
Exa is semantic, not keyword. Describe the page you want to find, not the keywords. "detailed blog post about X written by a practitioner" beats "X". Run 2-3 different angles (not synonyms) in parallel for coverage.
Handy flags when you need them:
-c company|news|research paper|github|pdf|personal site|linkedin profile|financial report— focus a category without leaving this skill.--include-domains a.com,b.com/--start-published 2025-01-01— scope by site or date.--text— pull page content when snippets aren't enough.
More than search (same vendored client)
python scripts/exa_client.py contents <url> --text # read a page's full content
python scripts/exa_client.py answer "<question>" # a direct, cited answer
python scripts/exa_client.py similar <url> -n 10 # pages similar to a URL
Token isolation (for multi-search tasks)
For anything beyond 1-2 queries, dispatch a subagent per angle (use the Agent tool), have each run this script and return a compact list, then merge + deduplicate. Keeps raw search output out of your main context.
After you get results
- Treat results as similarity, not validation — skim and drop off-target hits before relying on them.
- Lead your answer with the finding; cite source URLs inline; prefer a table when fields are uniform.
Part of the Exa Skills collection. For specialized research (companies, people, papers, code, finance, personal sites, X) install the matching skill from the repo.