Exa Research

Use the local `exa` CLI to search the live web, ask grounded questions with citations, fetch page contents, find similar links, retrieve Exa code context, or manage Exa research tasks. Use when the task needs current web information, source-backed answers, URL/page extraction, related-link discovery, code examples from the web, or Exa-specific API access. Prefer this over generic web search when Exa highlights, answer synthesis, or research workflows are specifically useful.

Use the bundled wrapper to run Exa reliably:

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh --help

Credentials

Preferred OpenClaw-native setup:

• skills.entries.exa-research.apiKey
• or skills.entries.exa-research.env.EXA_API_KEY

Other supported auth sources:

• ambient EXA_API_KEY
• EXA_API_KEY_FILE
• default file fallback at ~/.openclaw/credentials/exa/api-key.txt

The wrapper prefers credentials in this order:

1. existing EXA_API_KEY
2. EXA_API_KEY_FILE
3. the default file path above

Route to the smallest command that fits

• Use search for live web discovery and filtered result lists.
• Use answer for one grounded answer with citations.
• Use contents when URLs or result IDs are already known and text/highlights/summary are needed.
• Use similar when one seed URL is known and related pages are needed.
• Use context for coding patterns, library usage, and implementation examples.
• Use research for asynchronous or longer-running research workflows.
• Use raw only when a higher-level command cannot express the request.

Keep context lean

• Start narrow; broaden only if recall is poor.
• Prefer answer over manual search-plus-synthesis when the user wants a concise cited answer.
• Prefer highlights before full text when excerpts are enough.
• Cap payload size with --text-max, --highlights-max, and context --tokens.
• Add domains, categories, and date filters early instead of retrieving broad result sets.
• Do not dump large raw payloads into chat when a short synthesis will do.

Command patterns

Search

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh "latest developments in llms"
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh search --category news --include-domain reuters.com --highlights "AI regulation"
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh search --type deep --additional-query "llm releases" "latest frontier models"

Answer

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh answer "What is the latest valuation of SpaceX?"
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh answer --text "What changed in the latest OpenAI release?"

Contents

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh contents --text https://exa.ai
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh contents --id doc-1 --id doc-2 --highlights
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh contents --highlights --summary https://exa.ai https://example.com

Similar

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh similar --highlights https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.06435
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh similar --text --text-max 3000 https://exa.ai/blog

Context

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh context "React hooks for state management"
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh context --tokens 5000 "pandas dataframe filtering and groupby operations"

Research

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh research create "Summarize the latest developments in AI safety research"
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh research list --limit 10
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh research get 01jszdfs0052sg4jc552sg4jc5

Raw

{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh raw /search @payload.json
{baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh raw -X GET '/research/v1?limit=10'
printf '{"query":"latest llm news"}' | {baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh raw /search -

Practical guidance

• Run {baseDir}/scripts/exa-with-key.sh <subcommand> --help before guessing flags.
• If the task is exploratory, start with search, then escalate to contents only for selected URLs.
• If the task is code-oriented, prefer context over broad search.
• If the task needs longer-running synthesis, prefer research over ad hoc polling with raw.
• If the user asks for the upstream generated skill text, run exa skill.