# Exa Search

Searches scientific and technical web content with Exa and extracts page or PDF text...

- Repository: https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills (55651 stars)
- Category: Documents
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-10-26
- Runs scripts: yes, review before use

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill exa-search -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill exa-search -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill exa-search -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill exa-search -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

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.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Exa Web Toolkit

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.

## 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 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.

The rest: https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills/blob/HEAD/skills/exa-search/SKILL.md