exa-web-search

exa-web-search is a skill for Claude Code from exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin. It costs 49 tokens per session (573 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Instructions for using Exa as the default web-search tool for an AI coding agent. They cover searches for current information, documentation, research, code examples, and fact-checking.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when researching current events, APIs, software documentation, recent changes, technical examples, or claims that need verification.
Why use it?
They give the agent a consistent way to find information that may have changed since its training data. They also explain how to make focused queries and choose the number of results.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Good fit Use them when researching current events, APIs, software documentation, recent changes, technical…

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin/exa-web-search
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin --skill exa-web-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for exa-web-search

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin/exa-web-search.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin/exa-web-search)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin/exa-web-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin/exa-web-search.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 573 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00049 $0.00573
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00287
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00115
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00057

Measured 7d ago against content hash 9668b3cff3f5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

exa-web-search scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 7d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/exa-web-search/SKILL.md · 70 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Web Search (Exa)

Search the web for: $ARGUMENTS

Tool

Use web_search_exa for all web search requests.

When to Use

  • Current events, news, recent developments
  • Fact-checking or verifying claims
  • Finding articles, blog posts, documentation
  • Any question where the answer may have changed since training data cutoff
  • General research and information gathering
  • Code examples, API docs, and library usage

Trigger phrases: "search for", "find me", "look up", "what is", "find articles about", "research", "any recent", or any question that may need current information.

web_search_exa accepts:

  • query (string, required) — natural language search query
  • numResults (number, optional) — how many results to return

Query Tips

  • Write queries as natural language statements, not keywords
  • Be specific: "latest React 19 server components changes" beats "react updates"
  • Include time context when relevant: "2026 AI regulation proposals"
  • For broad topics, run 2-3 queries with different phrasings and merge results

Tuning Results

  • Quick lookup → numResults: 3-5
  • Standard research → numResults: 5-10 (default)
  • Deep dive → numResults: 10-20

Output Format

For every claim or fact, cite the source inline:

  1. Lead with the direct answer
  2. Support with specific facts, numbers, dates
  3. Cite every fact with its source URL
  4. End with a Sources section listing all URLs used

Before You Start

Check if Exa MCP is installed by confirming web_search_exa is available in your tool list.

If the MCP Server Is Not Connected

You (the AI) must:

  1. Stop immediately — do NOT search the web yourself, do NOT use websearch, and do NOT try to answer the query from your own knowledge.
  2. Inform the user that Exa MCP is not connected.

Request the user to:

  1. Run the /exa-setup command in Cursor to add the Exa MCP server.
  2. Go to Cursor Settings → Tools & MCP and make sure Exa is toggled on (green).
  3. Retry their search after completing the above steps.

Read the full file on GitHub · 70 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 70 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 9668b3cff3f5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

exa-web-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository exa-labs/exa-cursor-plugin (6 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 573 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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