exa-cli

README

exa

A command-line interface for the Exa API - search the web and extract content directly from your terminal.

Installation

Quick Install (Linux/macOS)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/12458/exa-cli/main/install.sh | bash

Homebrew

brew install 12458/tap/exa

Go Install

go install github.com/12458/exa-cli@latest

Manual Download

Download the latest binary from GitHub Releases.

Configuration

Get your API key from exa.ai and configure the CLI:

exa configure

Or set the environment variable:

export EXA_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Usage

Search the Web

# Basic search
exa search "latest AI news"

# Limit results
exa search -n 5 "golang best practices"

# Filter by domain
exa search -i github.com -i stackoverflow.com "error handling"

# Filter by category and recency
exa search -c news --max-age-hours 24 "tech layoffs"

# Include AI-generated summaries
exa search -s "machine learning tutorials"

# Include full text content
exa search --text "climate change research"

Get Content from URLs

# Extract content from a URL
exa contents https://example.com

# Multiple URLs with summaries
exa contents -s https://example.com https://another.com

# Output just the text (for piping)
exa contents -q https://example.com | head -100

Output Formats

# Table (default)
exa search "query"

# JSON
exa search -o json "query"

# Quiet mode (URLs only)
exa search -q "query"

Commands

Command	Alias	Description
search	s	Search the web using Exa
contents	c	Get contents from URLs
configure		Set up API key
completion		Generate shell completions
version		Show version info

Search Flags

Flag	Alias	Description
--type	-t	Search type: auto, fast
--num-results	-n	Number of results (1-100)
--include-domains	-i	Only include these domains
--exclude-domains	-x	Exclude these domains
--category	-c	Filter by category
--start-published-date		Start date (ISO 8601)
--end-published-date		End date (ISO 8601)
--max-age-hours		Maximum content age
--text		Include full text
--summary	-s	Include AI summary
--highlights	-H	Include highlights

Contents Flags

Flag	Alias	Description
--text	-t	Include full text (default: true)
--summary	-s	Include AI summary
--highlights	-H	Include highlights
--subpages	-p	Number of subpages to crawl
--context	-C	Combine results for RAG

Global Flags

Flag	Alias	Description
--api-key		Exa API key
--output	-o	Output format: table, json, toon
--quiet	-q	Quiet mode for scripting

Shell Completions

# Bash
exa completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/exa

# Zsh
exa completion zsh > "${fpath[1]}/_exa"

# Fish
exa completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/exa.fish

Examples

Research Workflow

# Find recent papers on a topic
exa search -c "research paper" -n 20 --max-age-hours 720 "transformer architecture"

# Get summaries of top results
exa search -s -n 5 "transformer architecture improvements 2024"

Content Extraction

# Extract article text for processing
exa contents -q https://blog.example.com/article | wc -w

# Get structured JSON for downstream tools
exa contents -o json -s https://example.com | jq '.results[0].summary'

Domain-Specific Search

# Search only documentation sites
exa search -i docs.python.org -i golang.org "context cancellation"

# Exclude social media
exa search -x twitter.com -x reddit.com "product reviews"

API Key Priority

1. --api-key flag
2. EXA_API_KEY environment variable
3. Config file (~/.config/exa/config.yaml)

License

MIT