# exa-cli

> Command-line interface for Exa — neural web search, URL crawling, and AI deep research from the terminal.

exa-cli wraps the Exa API (exa.ai) in three commands. Exa searches by meaning (semantic/neural), not keywords. All commands output clean JSON for use in scripts, pipelines, and AI agents.

## Install

```
uv tool install exa-cli
export EXA_API_KEY=your-key
```

Get API key at: https://exa.ai

## Commands

- `exa-search <query>` — neural web search. Flags: --json, --num-results, --type, --category, --start-date, --end-date, --include-domain, --exclude-domain, --similar <url>, --text
- `exa-crawl <url>` — fetch full readable text from URL. Flags: --json, --max-chars
- `exa-research <topic>` — AI deep research task. Flags: --json, --model

## Categories for exa-search --category

news, tweet, github, paper, company, research paper, financial report, personal site, pdf, linkedin profile

## Quick examples

```
exa-search "transformer architecture" --category "research paper" --json
exa-search --similar https://github.com/astral-sh/uv --json
exa-crawl https://example.com -c 8000
exa-research "current state of quantum error correction" --json
```

## JSON output

exa-search returns: results[]{title, url, published_date, author, highlights[], text}
exa-crawl returns: results[]{url, title, text}

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/nolan-vale/exa-cli
- PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/exa-cli/
- Exa API docs: https://docs.exa.ai
- Full CLI docs: https://github.com/nolan-vale/exa-cli/blob/main/docs/USAGE.md
- For agents: https://github.com/nolan-vale/exa-cli/blob/main/AGENTS.md
