Exa Web Research

Connect Exa to give Sasha live web search and URL fetching. Useful when Claude needs information beyond its training cutoff or wants to ground answers in current sources.

What You Can Do

Live web search — current news, prices, events, anything time-sensitive
Company research — funding, executives, product launches, competitor positioning
People research — LinkedIn-style profiles for sales prep and candidate research
URL content fetch — pull clean markdown from any public page
Fact-checking — verify claims against live sources before publishing
Deep research — iterate searches and URL fetches to synthesise multi-source reports

Prerequisites

Exa account with API access (sign up)
API key from dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys

Setup

Navigate to Settings → Tools → Exa Web Research
Paste your Exa API key
Click Save Configuration
Click Test Connection (free — does not consume search credits)
Click Register Server to enable Claude access

Example Uses

"Use Exa to research Acme Corp — recent funding, executive team, product launches."

"Find LinkedIn profiles for the CTO and Head of Engineering at Acme Corp."

"What's the latest on the OpenAI–Anthropic deal? Cite sources."

"Search for recent reviews comparing our top three competitors and summarise the consensus."

"Pull the latest pricing pages from competitor X, Y, and Z."

"Verify the claim that using Exa, and cite the URLs."

Available Tools

Tool	What It Does
`web_search_exa`	Natural-language web search. Use `category:company <query>` to bias toward company pages, `category:people <query>` for LinkedIn-style profiles.
`web_fetch_exa`	Read one or more specific URLs as clean markdown. Batch multiple URLs in a single call.

Both tools are exposed by Exa's hosted MCP at https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp. Sasha registers the server on your behalf when you configure your API key.

Query-Writing Tips

Describe the ideal page in natural language, not just keywords. Bad: "React vs Vue". Good: "blog post comparing React and Vue performance for large enterprise apps".
For company queries, lead with category:company. For people, category:people.
If search results don't have enough detail, follow up with a URL fetch on the most promising results.

Cost and Limits

Exa is metered per call. The free tier includes a small monthly allowance; production usage requires a paid plan. See exa.ai/pricing for details. The Test Connection button uses a free metadata endpoint — it does not consume search credits.

Security Notes

The API key is encrypted at rest and only sent to Exa over HTTPS as the x-api-key header.
Exa logs queries against your account — avoid passing customer PII or proprietary text in the search query.
Updates to the API key take effect for new sessions only. Restart any active Claude session after changing the key.
Revoke the key in the Exa dashboard to disconnect.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
"Test failed: HTTP 401"	Verify the key in dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys
"Test failed: timed out"	Check network connectivity to `mcp.exa.ai`; the test has a 15-second limit
Tool not appearing in Claude session	Click Register Server in Settings, then start a new session
Rate limited	Free tier has limits — upgrade your Exa plan for higher quotas