quickstart.md

Quickstart

This guide helps you install and use the exa-direct CLI quickly.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• An Exa API key (from https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys)

Install

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install -e .

Configure

export EXA_API_KEY=sk-...

First Run

• Fast search with page text:

exa search --query "Latest research in LLMs" --type fast --text --pretty

• Contents (livecrawl preferred):

exa contents https://example.com --text --livecrawl preferred

• Answer with citations:

exa answer --query "Summarize Exa 2.0 updates" --pretty

• Research (create + poll):

exa research start --instructions @examples/research_instructions.md \
  --schema @examples/research_schema.json --model exa-research-fast
exa research poll --id <researchId> --preset balanced

• Research (stream JSON-lines):

exa research stream --id <researchId> | jq .

• Context (Exa Code):

exa context query --query "pandas groupby examples" --tokensNum dynamic

Transport notes (Context)

The Context client uses HTTP/2 with a total timeout. Transient network errors and HTTP 5xx responses are retried with short backoff (0.1s, 0.2s, 0.5s) before a final attempt.

References

• API overview: https://exa.ai/blog/exa-api-2-0
• Endpoints:
  • Search: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/search
  • Contents: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/get-contents
  • Find Similar: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/find-similar-links
  • Answer: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/answer
  • Research:
    • Create: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/research/create-a-task
    • Get: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/research/get-a-task
    • List: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/research/list-tasks
  • Context (Exa Code): https://docs.exa.ai/reference/context
  • Livecrawling Contents: https://docs.exa.ai/reference/livecrawling-contents