Web toolkit powered by Exa

Exa Web Toolkit

by K-Dense-AI · MIT license · ★ 45,977 on GitHub · updated Sep 21

Web toolkit powered by Exa, tuned for scientific and technical content. Use this skill when the user needs to search the web or fetch/extract URL content.

---
name: exa-search
description: "Web toolkit powered by Exa, tuned for scientific and technical content. Use this skill when the user needs to search the web or fetch/extract URL content. Covers: web search (semantic lookups, research, current info — with optional research-paper category and academic domain filtering) and URL extraction (fetching pages, articles, academic PDFs in batch). Use this skill for web-related tasks when the user wants high-quality search or scholarly filtering via category=research paper. Triggers on requests to search, look up, fetch a page, or extract an article."
compatibility: Requires exa-py Python SDK, an EXA_API_KEY, and internet access.
license: MIT
metadata:
  version: "1.2"
  skill-author: Exa
  website: https://exa.ai
  docs: https://exa.ai/docs
  openclaw:
    primaryEnv: EXA_API_KEY
    envVars:
    - name: EXA_API_KEY
      required: true
      description: Exa search API key.
---

Overview

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.

Manual install (npx, ZIP)

Claude Codenpx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill exa-search -g -a claude-code

Claude Code (manual)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && curl -sL https://codeload.github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills/tar.gz/49c6e97775ea \
  | tar -xz -C ~/.claude/skills --strip-components=2 scientific-agent-skills-49c6e97775ea/skills/exa-search

Windows (PowerShell)

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$HOME\.claude\skills" | Out-Null; Invoke-WebRequest "https://m.agentalley.io/zip/8f2b3f8c460beeeac347/exa-search.zip" -OutFile "$env:TEMP\exa-search.zip"; Expand-Archive "$env:TEMP\exa-search.zip" -DestinationPath "$HOME\.claude\skills" -Force

Claude.ai / desktopDownload the ZIP and upload it under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

Codex, Cursor, other agentsPoint them at SKILL.md. The other files are plain text.

Connects with Agent Alley MCP · agentalley.io/mcp

Files included

SKILL.md4.9 KB
references/2 files · 7.2 KB
scripts/2 files · 9.3 KB

Read the files here

K-Dense-AI/49c6e975 files

SKILL.md4.9 KB

SKILL.md

Show the full text103 lines

exa-search/SKILL.md103 lines · 4.9 KB

PreviewCode

Outline

RawView on GitHub

Exa Web Toolkit

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...	Capability	Where
Look something up, research a topic, find current info	Web Search	`references/web-search.md`
Fetch content from a specific URL (webpage, article, PDF)	Web Extract	`references/web-extract.md`
Install or authenticate	Setup	Below

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 "research paper" 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:

--category "research paper" biases retrieval toward scholarly sources.
--include-domains with a scholarly allowlist (arxiv.org, nature.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, etc.) restricts the domain pool.

Combine both for strictly academic results. 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 --with exa-py python "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" --help

If you prefer a persistent install:

uv pip install "exa-py>=1.14.0"

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 --with exa-py python "$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"

Verify by running any script with --help — it will exit cleanly if the key is set and auth-check runs only when a real query is made.

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

1	---
2	name: exa-search
3	description: "Web toolkit powered by Exa, tuned for scientific and technical content. Use this skill when the user needs to search the web or fetch/extract URL content. Covers: web search (semantic lookups, research, current info — with optional research-paper category and academic domain filtering) and URL extraction (fetching pages, articles, academic PDFs in batch). Use this skill for web-related tasks when the user wants high-quality search or scholarly filtering via category=research paper. Triggers on requests to search, look up, fetch a page, or extract an article."
4	compatibility: Requires exa-py Python SDK, an EXA_API_KEY, and internet access.
5	license: MIT
6	metadata:
7	version: "1.2"
8	skill-author: Exa
9	website: https://exa.ai
10	docs: https://exa.ai/docs
11	openclaw:
12	primaryEnv: EXA_API_KEY
13	envVars:
14	- name: EXA_API_KEY
15	required: true
16	description: Exa search API key.
17	---
18
19	# Exa Web Toolkit
20
21	A skill for web-powered research tasks backed by [Exa](https://exa.ai): 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.
22
23	## Routing — pick the right capability
24
25	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.
26
27	\| User wants to... \| Capability \| Where \|
28	\|---\|---\|---\|
29	\| Look something up, research a topic, find current info \| Web Search \| `references/web-search.md` \|
30	\| Fetch content from a specific URL (webpage, article, PDF) \| Web Extract \| `references/web-extract.md` \|
31	\| Install or authenticate \| Setup \| Below \|
32
33	### Decision guide
34
35	- Default to Web Search for topic lookups, research questions, or "what is X?" queries. When the topic is scientific or technical, pass `--category "research paper"` to bias toward scholarly sources, and/or an academic `--include-domains` allowlist. See `references/web-search.md` for the two-pass academic strategy.
36	- 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.
37
38	### Academic source priority
39
40	For technical or scientific queries, prefer academic and scientific sources:
41	- Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings over blog posts or news
42	- Preprints (arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv) when peer-reviewed versions aren't available
43	- Institutional and government sources (NIH, WHO, NASA, NIST) over commercial sites
44	- Primary research over secondary summaries
45
46	Two levers to steer Exa toward scholarly content:
47	1. `--category "research paper"` biases retrieval toward scholarly sources.
48	2. `--include-domains` with a scholarly allowlist (arxiv.org, nature.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, etc.) restricts the domain pool.
49
50	Combine both for strictly academic results. See `references/web-search.md` for the full pattern.
51
52	When citing academic sources, include author names and publication year where available (e.g., [Smith et al., 2025](url)) in addition to the standard citation format. If a DOI is present, prefer the DOI link.
53
54	---
55
56	## Setup
57
58	This skill uses the [`exa-py`](https://github.com/exa-labs/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:
59
60	```bash
61	uv run --with exa-py python "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" --help
62	```
63
64	If you prefer a persistent install:
65
66	```bash
67	uv pip install "exa-py>=1.14.0"
68	```
69
70	### Authentication
71
72	All commands read the API key from the `EXA_API_KEY` environment variable. Get your Exa API key at [dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys](https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys).
73
74	First, check if a `.env` file exists in the project root and contains `EXA_API_KEY`. If so, load it:
75
76	```bash
77	dotenv -f .env run -- uv run --with exa-py python "$SKILL_PATH/scripts/exa_search.py" "your query"
78	```
79
80	If `dotenv` isn't available, install it: `uv pip install python-dotenv[cli]`.
81
82	If there's no `.env`, export the key for the session:
83
84	```bash
85	export EXA_API_KEY="your-key"
86	```
87
88	Verify by running any script with `--help` — it will exit cleanly if the key is set and auth-check runs only when a real query is made.
89
90	### Tracking header
91
92	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.
93
94	---
95
96	## Files in this skill
97
98	- `SKILL.md` — this file (routing and setup)
99	- `references/web-search.md` — detailed web search reference with academic strategy
100	- `references/web-extract.md` — URL content extraction reference
101	- `scripts/exa_search.py` — CLI wrapper around `client.search_and_contents`
102	- `scripts/exa_extract.py` — CLI wrapper around `client.get_contents`
103