Skills · last verified 2026-10-23

exa-labs/exa-mcp-server — install for Claude Code

github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server · MCP server + skills · web search and research

What it does

Exa's MCP server connects an agent to Exa web search, page fetching and multi-step research. The default tools are web_search_exa and web_fetch_exa; an optional agent_run tool runs longer research jobs. The repo also ships two skills: search, a research orchestrator that plans work, dispatches subagents and compiles cited results, and exa-agent, which drives the agent_run tool with structured output schemas.

Authentication is OAuth (recommended in the skill files) or an API key; anonymous use works but is rate-limited, according to the search skill. The skills are explicit that Exa returns similarity, not validation — results have to be checked against the user's criteria before they are reported.

Install

Claude Code (verified against the repo README's Claude section):

claude plugin install exa@claude-plugins-official

Codex / ChatGPT (same README):

codex mcp add exa --url https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp

Other MCP clients can point at the hosted server URL https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp with the standard mcpServers shape documented in the README.

Verified against github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server (README, Installation; skills/), 2026-10-23.

Trust score: 7/10

Full code read: both skill files in skills/ (search and exa-agent SKILL.md, 467 lines) and every reference file under skills/search/references/ (437 lines) were read in full from a fresh clone of the repo.

• Skill-file review (3/3): the skill files are instruction markdown only — no scripts, no executables. The search skill explicitly forbids using Bash, Grep, Read or Write to process results, and tells the agent to mark missing data as not found rather than guessing.
• Install behavior (2/3): the plugin install is a file install, but the working path is a vendor-hosted server: every query goes to Exa's service, and authentication means OAuth or an API key. Anonymous use is rate-limited.
• Prompt-injection surface (2/4): retrieved web pages become prompt content, so a hostile or sloppy source can steer the agent. The skills mitigate this — they require validation, source-quality tagging and explicit coverage language — but they cannot remove the surface, since web research is the whole job.

How the score works: skill-file review, install behavior, and prompt-injection surface, each scored against what the skill asks for beyond its stated job. This is a public-code review as of 2026-10-23 — a signal, not a certification. Full methodology: skills index.

Verification

Tier: AUTHOR_DOCS_VERIFIED. Verified 2026-10-23 from the author's own repository (fresh clone this run). No install was executed and no account was connected in this pass.

What was checked: Author README (Installation, Claude, Codex, tools tables) and the complete skills/ tree — both SKILL.md files and all reference files, 904 lines in total — were read in full from a fresh clone of the repo. The skill files were also searched for shell execution, download and evaluation patterns; the only matches were prose mentions (for example, the instruction not to use Bash tools on results).

Limits: Install commands checked against the author README; not executed in this pass, and no Exa account was connected. The score covers the skill files only, not the hosted MCP server code or the Exa service itself.

Sources: github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server (README, Installation; skills/)

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