Exa MCP: web search and research inside your AI app

Connect Exa to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor

1. 1Click Connect Exa free and sign in with your Exa account.
2. 2Exa's tools are all on when you connect. Search and answers only read the web; switch off deleting websets or imports, which removes them for good, and creating monitors if scheduled runs should be set up by a person.
3. 3Add ContextGate to your AI app as a connector or MCP server. The steps for each app are on the Works with page.
4. 4Ask your AI app for a cited answer about a recent framework release using Exa, then open Activity to see the search.

Research tasks Exa handles for your AI app

• Run a web search with category filters, or find pages similar to a URL you already like.
• Fetch the text and highlights of a set of URLs for your AI app to read.
• Get a direct answer to a question, with citations, built on Exa's search.
• Create a webset with search and enrichment, and add a monitor to keep it updated.

Control Exa usage and data

• Switch off the delete and monitor tools; search and answers keep working.
• Policies check every query, so a secret or customer name pasted into a search can be blocked or hidden before it reaches Exa.
• Activity records every Exa call, so you can see what your team searched for.

What you get with Exa and ContextGate

• Your AI apps can use ExaClaude, Cursor, ChatGPT and other AI apps reach Exa through the one ContextGate connection you add to them.
• You choose which tools they can useSwitch off any Exa tool you don't want used. It's hidden from your AI apps and refused if called.
• Every call is checked and recordedYour policies check each call (for example, personal data is hidden and secrets are blocked), and Activity keeps a record of it.

ContextGate sees only the tool calls that go through it, not your AI app's built-in tools or your chats.

Exa tools

Examples of what your AI apps can do in Exa. You'll see the exact list of tools after you connect it.

• Generate an answerGenerates a direct, citation-backed answer to a clear natural language question or topic using exa's search, adept at both specific answers and detailed summaries for open-ended queries.
• Create ImportTool to create a new import to upload data into a webset. use when you need to initialize an import before uploading the data file.
• Create a MonitorTool to create a new monitor. use when you need to schedule automated updates for a webset without manual runs.
• Create WebsetTool to create a new webset with search, import, and enrichment setup. use when you need to configure and seed a webset in one call.
• Delete websetTool to delete a webset. use after confirming the webset id to permanently remove the webset and all its items.
• Find similarFinds web pages semantically similar to a given url using embeddings-based search, optionally retrieving full text, highlights, or summaries for results.
• Get contents from URLs or document IDsRetrieves configurable text and highlights from a list of exa document ids or publicly accessible urls.
• List eventsTool to list all events that have occurred in the system. use when you need to paginate through the event history.
• List importsTool to list all imports for the webset. use when you need to paginate through and monitor import jobs.
• SearchPerforms a web search using the exa engine, useful for queries requiring advanced filtering, specific content categories, or ai-optimized prompting.
• Delete importTool to delete an existing import. use when you need to permanently remove an import by its id.
• Get EventTool to get details of a specific event by its id. use when you have an event id and need its full details.
• List webhooksTool to list all webhooks for websets. use when you need to view existing webhooks and paginate through results.
• Update importTool to update an import configuration by id. use when you need to modify an import's title or metadata.