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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.

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Prerequisites

  • An Exa account with an API key
  • project_contributor access in AgentRuntime

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Connect in AgentRuntime

1

Get an Exa API key

Sign up at exa.ai and copy your API key from the dashboard.
2

Create a connection

Go to Connections and click New custom connection to create an API key connection with APIKey.
3

Add exa MCP instance

Go to MCP, click Add instance for exa, wire your connection on Instance config, set the profile active, and save.
4

Test search

Run mcp_call → exa_search with a simple query to confirm connectivity.
See Authentication for binding connections to MCP instances.

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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.

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Tools

ToolDescription
exa_searchWeb search with modes auto, fast, or deep; optional full page text
exa_find_similarFind pages semantically similar to a given URL
exa_answerAI-generated answer with cited web sources

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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
}

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Configuration

KeyRequiredDescription
APIKeyYesExa API key
APIBaseNoExa API base URL

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Troubleshooting

IssueFix
Empty resultsBroaden query; try type=deep for niche topics
Rate limitsReduce num_results or add backoff between workflow runs
Stale citations in exa_answerRe-run search; Exa synthesizes from live index at query time
High latency on deep searchIncrease step timeout_s; deep mode takes longer than fast