exa-cli

Command-line interface for the Exa AI search API. Search the web, retrieve page contents, find similar pages, and get AI-powered answers with citations.

Installation

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew tap builtbyrobben/tap
brew install exa-cli

Download Binary

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/builtbyrobben/exa-cli.git
cd exa-cli
make build

Configuration

exa-cli authenticates via an Exa API key. You can provide it in two ways:

Environment variable (recommended for CI/scripts):

export EXA_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Keyring storage (recommended for interactive use):

# Interactive prompt (secure)
exa-cli auth set-key --stdin

# Pipe from environment
echo "$EXA_API_KEY" | exa-cli auth set-key --stdin

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
EXA_API_KEY	API key (overrides keyring)
EXA_CLI_COLOR	Color output: auto, always, never
EXA_CLI_OUTPUT	Default output mode: json, plain

Global Flags

Flag	Description
--json	Output JSON to stdout (best for scripting)
--plain	Output stable, parseable text (TSV; no colors)
--color	Color output: auto, always, never
--verbose	Enable verbose logging
--force	Skip confirmations for destructive commands
--no-input	Never prompt; fail instead (useful for CI)

Commands

auth

Manage authentication credentials.

# Store API key in system keyring
exa-cli auth set-key --stdin

# Check authentication status
exa-cli auth status

# Remove stored credentials
exa-cli auth remove

search

Search the web using Exa's neural or keyword search.

# Basic search
exa-cli search "best practices for Go error handling"

# Control number of results
exa-cli search "AI news" --num 10

# Search type: auto, neural, or keyword
exa-cli search "golang tutorials" --type neural

# Filter by domain
exa-cli search "golang tutorials" --domains go.dev,gobyexample.com

# Exclude domains
exa-cli search "tech news" --exclude-domains reddit.com,twitter.com

# Filter by publish date
exa-cli search "climate research" --start-date 2024-01-01 --end-date 2024-12-31

# Output as JSON
exa-cli search "Go concurrency" --json

contents

Search and retrieve full page contents in a single call.

# Search with page text
exa-cli contents "how to use context in Go"

# Control number of results and text length
exa-cli contents "machine learning papers" --num 5 --max-chars 5000

# Include highlights
exa-cli contents "API design patterns" --highlights

# Include AI summary per result
exa-cli contents "distributed systems" --summary

# Filter by domain
exa-cli contents "React hooks" --domains react.dev,dev.to

# Output as JSON
exa-cli contents "WebAssembly tutorial" --json

find-similar

Find pages similar to a given URL.

# Find similar pages
exa-cli find-similar "https://go.dev/doc/effective_go"

# Control number of results
exa-cli find-similar "https://example.com/article" --num 10

# Filter by domain
exa-cli find-similar "https://example.com" --domains dev.to,medium.com

# Exclude domains
exa-cli find-similar "https://example.com" --exclude-domains reddit.com

# Output as JSON
exa-cli find-similar "https://go.dev/blog" --json

answer

Get AI-powered answers with source citations.

# Ask a question
exa-cli answer "What is the difference between goroutines and threads?"

# Control number of source results
exa-cli answer "How does HTTP/3 improve performance?" --num 10

# Output as JSON
exa-cli answer "What is WebAssembly?" --json

version

Print version information.

exa-cli version

License

MIT