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Exa Search

K-DenseCommunityCreated by ExaDistributed by K-Dense

  • Skill
  • Tool integration
  • Data and AI
  • MIT
  • Low risk
  • Has scripts
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From the author

Searches scientific and technical web content with Exa and extracts page or PDF text from URLs in batches. Supports scholarly discovery with the publication category and academic domain filters. Applies to requests to search the web, look up current research, fetch a page, or extract an article using Exa.
— the description by Exa

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

The Exa Web Toolkit provides a structured interface for AI agents to interact with the Exa search and content extraction APIs. It is designed to handle both general web queries and rigorous academic research by offering configurable search modes, domain filtering, and batch processing of URLs. The skill includes CLI wrappers for search and extraction tasks, ensuring that retrieved data is saved locally for consistent follow-up analysis.

What it does

  • Performs web searches with configurable depth, including fast, deep, and reasoning-focused modes.
  • Extracts full-text content or highlights from multiple URLs in a single batch operation.
  • Supports scholarly discovery by filtering for academic publications and specific research domains.
  • Saves search and extraction results to local JSON files for persistent reference.
  • Provides mechanisms to bias results toward peer-reviewed journals, preprints, and institutional sources.
  • Handles metadata extraction for academic papers, including authors and publication dates.

When to use it

  • When you need to research scientific or technical topics using high-quality, scholarly sources.
  • When you must fetch and process the full text of multiple webpages or academic PDFs simultaneously.
  • When performing complex, multi-step research that requires both academic and general web perspectives.
  • When you need to maintain a record of search results for subsequent analysis or citation.

Advantages

  • Enables precise control over search scope through domain allowlists and publication categories.
  • Reduces token usage and improves signal-to-noise ratios via highlight-only retrieval modes.
  • Facilitates batch processing of up to 100 URLs per request.
  • Standardizes the handling of academic citations and metadata.
  • Integrates seamlessly into agent workflows via CLI wrappers and local file persistence.

Usage examples

“Search for recent advancements in CRISPR gene editing, focusing on peer-reviewed journals.”
The agent executes a search using the publication category and a scholarly domain allowlist, saving the results to a JSON file for synthesis.
“Extract the full text from these three research paper URLs: [URL1], [URL2], [URL3].”
The agent uses the batch extraction tool to fetch the content from all three URLs and provides a summary of the findings.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/k-dense-ai/exa-search/download

  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip exa-search.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Exa

Exa Web Toolkit

A skill for web-powered research tasks backed by Exa: web search and URL extraction. Exa's index combines high-quality keyword and semantic retrieval, which makes it well-suited to scientific, technical, and conceptual queries.

Routing — pick the right capability

Read the user's request and match it to one of the capabilities below. Read the corresponding reference file for detailed instructions before running commands.

User wants to...CapabilityWhere
Look something up, research a topic, find current infoWeb Searchreferences/web-search.md
Fetch content from a specific URL (webpage, article, PDF)Web Extractreferences/web-extract.md
Install or authenticateSetupBelow
Decision guide

  • Default to Web Search for topic lookups, research questions, or "what is X?" queries. When the topic is scientific or technical, pass --category publication to bias toward scholarly sources, and/or an academic --include-domains allowlist. See references/web-search.md for the two-pass academic strategy.

  • Use Web Extract when the user provides a URL or asks you to read/fetch a specific page. Prefer this over the built-in WebFetch for batch extraction (multiple URLs in one call) and for academic PDFs.

Academic source priority

For technical or scientific queries, prefer academic and scientific sources:

  • Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings over blog posts or news

  • Preprints (arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv) when peer-reviewed versions aren't available

  • Institutional and government sources (NIH, WHO, NASA, NIST) over commercial sites

  • Primary research over secondary summaries

Two levers to steer Exa toward scholarly content:

  1. --category publication biases retrieval toward scholarly sources.

  2. --include-domains with a scholarly allowlist (arxiv.org, nature.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, etc.) restricts the domain pool.

Combine both to narrow the source pool; verify publication type and peer-review status on each source. See references/web-search.md for the full pattern.

When citing academic sources, include author names and publication year where available (e.g., Smith et al., 2025) in addition to the standard citation format. If a DOI is present, prefer the DOI link.

Setup

This skill uses the exa-py Python SDK. The scripts in scripts/ declare their dependencies via PEP 723 inline metadata, so you can run them directly with uv run without a separate install step:

uv run "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" --help

If you prefer a persistent install:

uv pip install "exa-py>=2.23.0,<3"
Authentication

All commands read the API key from the EXA_API_KEY environment variable. Get your Exa API key at dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys.

First, check if a .env file exists in the project root and contains EXA_API_KEY. If so, load it:

dotenv -f .env run -- uv run "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" "your query"

If dotenv isn't available, install it: uv pip install 'python-dotenv[cli]'.

If there's no .env, export the key for the session:

export EXA_API_KEY="your-key"

Use --help to verify installation and CLI parsing; it does not require an API key or validate authentication. Authentication is checked only when a real query is made.

Extraction limits and freshness

The extractor accepts 1–100 URLs per POST https://api.exa.ai/contents call and exports each SDK status (id, status, source). It rejects larger batches. Use --max-age-hours 0 to request fresh content, -1 for cache only, or a positive age up to 720 hours. Omission uses Exa's cache/fallback policy. published_date is estimated publication metadata, not retrieval time. The tested SDK drops per-URL error details, so report failures without inventing a cause. See URL Extraction.

Verified API and SDK scope

Reviewed the Search API, Contents API, and Exa changelog on 2026-09-30. Both routes use JSON POST requests and x-api-key authentication (the SDK sets this header). Search is POST https://api.exa.ai/search; its SDK kwargs use snake_case and are serialized to camelCase. The current scholarly category is publication; research paper is a compatibility alias in this wrapper. No offset or cursor pagination is documented for these endpoints.

Helpers are tested with exa-py==2.23.0, including mocked HTTP transport through the real SDK. Search content flags are explicit: no flags means metadata only; --highlights does not implicitly fetch text. Authenticated search/extraction examples below and in the references are illustrative; no paid live calls were made during this review.

Tracking header

Every script in this skill sets the x-exa-integration request header to k-dense-ai--scientific-agent-skills so Exa can attribute usage from the K-Dense AI scientific-agent-skills repo to this integration. Do not remove or rename this header when adapting the scripts.

Files in this skill

  • SKILL.md — this file (routing and setup)

  • references/web-search.md — detailed web search reference with academic strategy

  • references/web-extract.md — URL content extraction reference

  • scripts/exa_search.py — CLI wrapper around client.search

  • scripts/exa_extract.py — CLI wrapper around client.get_contents

Files

SKILL.md

Exa Web Toolkit

A skill for web-powered research tasks backed by Exa: web search and URL extraction. Exa's index combines high-quality keyword and semantic retrieval, which makes it well-suited to scientific, technical, and conceptual queries.

Routing — pick the right capability

Read the user's request and match it to one of the capabilities below. Read the corresponding reference file for detailed instructions before running commands.

User wants to...CapabilityWhere
Look something up, research a topic, find current infoWeb Searchreferences/web-search.md
Fetch content from a specific URL (webpage, article, PDF)Web Extractreferences/web-extract.md
Install or authenticateSetupBelow
Decision guide

  • Default to Web Search for topic lookups, research questions, or "what is X?" queries. When the topic is scientific or technical, pass --category publication to bias toward scholarly sources, and/or an academic --include-domains allowlist. See references/web-search.md for the two-pass academic strategy.

  • Use Web Extract when the user provides a URL or asks you to read/fetch a specific page. Prefer this over the built-in WebFetch for batch extraction (multiple URLs in one call) and for academic PDFs.

Academic source priority

For technical or scientific queries, prefer academic and scientific sources:

  • Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings over blog posts or news

  • Preprints (arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv) when peer-reviewed versions aren't available

  • Institutional and government sources (NIH, WHO, NASA, NIST) over commercial sites

  • Primary research over secondary summaries

Two levers to steer Exa toward scholarly content:

  1. --category publication biases retrieval toward scholarly sources.

  2. --include-domains with a scholarly allowlist (arxiv.org, nature.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, etc.) restricts the domain pool.

Combine both to narrow the source pool; verify publication type and peer-review status on each source. See references/web-search.md for the full pattern.

When citing academic sources, include author names and publication year where available (e.g., Smith et al., 2025) in addition to the standard citation format. If a DOI is present, prefer the DOI link.

Setup

This skill uses the exa-py Python SDK. The scripts in scripts/ declare their dependencies via PEP 723 inline metadata, so you can run them directly with uv run without a separate install step:

uv run "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" --help

If you prefer a persistent install:

uv pip install "exa-py>=2.23.0,<3"
Authentication

All commands read the API key from the EXA_API_KEY environment variable. Get your Exa API key at dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys.

First, check if a .env file exists in the project root and contains EXA_API_KEY. If so, load it:

dotenv -f .env run -- uv run "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" "your query"

If dotenv isn't available, install it: uv pip install 'python-dotenv[cli]'.

If there's no .env, export the key for the session:

export EXA_API_KEY="your-key"

Use --help to verify installation and CLI parsing; it does not require an API key or validate authentication. Authentication is checked only when a real query is made.

Extraction limits and freshness

The extractor accepts 1–100 URLs per POST https://api.exa.ai/contents call and exports each SDK status (id, status, source). It rejects larger batches. Use --max-age-hours 0 to request fresh content, -1 for cache only, or a positive age up to 720 hours. Omission uses Exa's cache/fallback policy. published_date is estimated publication metadata, not retrieval time. The tested SDK drops per-URL error details, so report failures without inventing a cause. See URL Extraction.

Verified API and SDK scope

Reviewed the Search API, Contents API, and Exa changelog on 2026-09-30. Both routes use JSON POST requests and x-api-key authentication (the SDK sets this header). Search is POST https://api.exa.ai/search; its SDK kwargs use snake_case and are serialized to camelCase. The current scholarly category is publication; research paper is a compatibility alias in this wrapper. No offset or cursor pagination is documented for these endpoints.

Helpers are tested with exa-py==2.23.0, including mocked HTTP transport through the real SDK. Search content flags are explicit: no flags means metadata only; --highlights does not implicitly fetch text. Authenticated search/extraction examples below and in the references are illustrative; no paid live calls were made during this review.

Tracking header

Every script in this skill sets the x-exa-integration request header to k-dense-ai--scientific-agent-skills so Exa can attribute usage from the K-Dense AI scientific-agent-skills repo to this integration. Do not remove or rename this header when adapting the scripts.

Files in this skill

  • SKILL.md — this file (routing and setup)

  • references/web-search.md — detailed web search reference with academic strategy

  • references/web-extract.md — URL content extraction reference

  • scripts/exa_search.py — CLI wrapper around client.search

  • scripts/exa_extract.py — CLI wrapper around client.get_contents

Requirements and compatibility

Written for: Claude Code

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Names Claude Code tools, Needs an API key, Needs Python

The author says: Requires Python 3.11+, exa-py>=2.23.0,<3, an EXA_API_KEY, and internet access.

Security

What our scanner noticed· Low risk

  • Instructions that use the network
  • Scripts that your agent may run

This skill includes scripts that your agent may run. Read them before you use it.

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Created by
Exa
Publisher
K-Dense (Community)
Distributed by
K-Dense
Source
K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills · skills/exa-search · commit a25cf9e
Licence
MIT License (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE.md)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Exa or K-Dense.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download exa-search.zip