Exa connector

The exa MCP adapter connects to Exa for neural and keyword web search. Find relevant pages, discover content similar to a URL, and get AI-generated answers with citations — ideal for research workflows and grounded agent responses.

Prerequisites

An Exa account with an API key
project_contributor access in AgentRuntime

Connect in AgentRuntime

Get an Exa API key

Create a connection

Go to Connections and click New custom connection to create an API key connection with APIKey.

Add exa MCP instance

Go to MCP, click Add instance for exa, wire your connection on Instance config, set the profile active, and save.

Test search

Run mcp_call → exa_search with a simple query to confirm connectivity.

See Authentication for binding connections to MCP instances.

What you can build

Research briefs — exa_search with include_text=true → LLM synthesizes findings → save to Notion or Google Docs.
Competitive intel — exa_find_similar on a competitor landing page → rank overlapping products.
Q&A with citations — exa_answer for user questions in Chat Autopilot → display answer plus source URLs.
Deep research mode — exa_search with type=deep for multi-hop investigation before human review.

Tools

Tool	Description
`exa_search`	Web search with modes `auto`, `fast`, or `deep`; optional full page text
`exa_find_similar`	Find pages semantically similar to a given URL
`exa_answer`	AI-generated answer with cited web sources

Example

Search the web and pass results to an LLM step:

{
  "id": "exa-research",
  "type": "mcp_call",
  "name": "Research topic",
  "tool_name": "exa_search",
  "tool_args": {
    "query": "{{input.topic}} market trends 2026",
    "num_results": 8,
    "type": "auto",
    "include_text": true
  },
  "timeout_s": 45
}

Configuration

Key	Required	Description
`APIKey`	Yes	Exa API key
`APIBase`	No	Exa API base URL

Troubleshooting

Issue	Fix
Empty results	Broaden query; try `type=deep` for niche topics
Rate limits	Reduce `num_results` or add backoff between workflow runs
Stale citations in `exa_answer`	Re-run search; Exa synthesizes from live index at query time
High latency on deep search	Increase step `timeout_s`; deep mode takes longer than `fast`

Integrations quickstart
Brave connector — alternative web search
Connector catalog
Troubleshooting

Get started

Platform

Workflows

Guides

Integration setup

Connectors

AI & chat

API

Prerequisites

Connect in AgentRuntime

What you can build

Tools

Example

Configuration

Troubleshooting

​Prerequisites

​Connect in AgentRuntime

​What you can build

​Tools

​Example

​Configuration

​Troubleshooting

​Related

Prerequisites

Connect in AgentRuntime

What you can build

Tools

Example

Configuration

Troubleshooting

Related