name: "cli-anything-exa"
description: >-
Agent-native CLI for Exa web search and content retrieval workflows.

Exa CLI Skill#

Identity#

Name: cli-anything-exa
Version: 1.0.0
Category: search
Entry Point: cli-anything-exa

What This CLI Does#

Provides an agent-native command-line interface to the Exa API — a neural search engine
optimised for AI agent workflows. Supports web search across multiple modes (fast, deep,
deep-reasoning) and fetching full-text or highlighted page contents.

Prerequisites#

Python >= 3.10
pip install cli-anything-exa
export EXA_API_KEY="your-api-key" (get one at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys)

Installation#

pip install git+https://github.com/HKUDS/CLI-Anything.git#subdirectory=exa/agent-harness

Command Reference#

search — Web search#

cli-anything-exa search "<query>" [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --type       auto|fast|instant|deep|deep-reasoning  (default: auto)
  --num-results / -n   1–100  (default: 10)
  --category   company|people|research-paper|news|personal-site|financial-report
  --content    highlights|text|summary|none  (default: highlights)
  --freshness  smart|always|never  (default: smart)
  --include-domains DOMAIN   (repeatable)
  --exclude-domains DOMAIN   (repeatable)
  --from DATE   ISO 8601 start published date
  --to   DATE   ISO 8601 end published date
  --location CC  Two-letter country code for geo-bias

contents — Fetch page contents#

cli-anything-exa contents <url> [url ...] [--content text|highlights|summary] [--freshness smart|always|never]

server status — Verify API key and connectivity#

cli-anything-exa server status

JSON Output#

All commands support --json at the root level for machine-readable output:

cli-anything-exa --json search "latest LLM papers" --num-results 5

Common Agent Patterns#

Fast keyword lookup#

cli-anything-exa --json search "site:arxiv.org transformer architectures" --type fast --content highlights

Deep research on a topic#

cli-anything-exa --json search "EU AI Act compliance requirements 2024" --type deep --content text

Academic paper discovery#

cli-anything-exa --json search "retrieval augmented generation" --category research-paper --num-results 20

Company intelligence#

cli-anything-exa --json search "Anthropic funding history" --category company

News monitoring#

cli-anything-exa --json search "AI regulation news" --category news --from 2024-01-01

Fetch full content for summarisation#

cli-anything-exa --json contents https://example.com/article --content text

Interactive REPL#

cli-anything-exa   # No subcommand → enters REPL

Type commands without the cli-anything-exa prefix. Type exit or quit to leave.

Notes#

highlights content mode is 10× more token-efficient than text — prefer it for agent pipelines
--type deep triggers multi-step reasoning; slower but synthesises across many sources
--category company and --category people do not support date or domain-exclude filters
Cost per query is included in JSON output under cost_dollars