Exa Research

Neural web search via BlockRun. Understands meaning, not keywords. Four distinct actions for different research modes.

How to Call from MCP

As of v0.14.1 the blockrun_exa tool is path-based. Pass the endpoint name as path and the request as body:

blockrun_exa({ path: "search",       body: { query: "AI agent frameworks 2026", numResults: 10 } })
blockrun_exa({ path: "answer",       body: { query: "What is speculative decoding?" } })
blockrun_exa({ path: "contents",     body: { urls: ["https://example.com/a", "https://example.com/b"] } })
blockrun_exa({ path: "find-similar", body: { url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345", numResults: 5 } })

Quick Decision Table

Costs below are what you are actually CHARGED — the $0.001 transaction fee is already included (it applies once per call, not per result).

User wants...	Path	Body	Cost
Relevant URLs on a topic	search	{ query, numResults?, category? }	$0.0110/call
Cited answer to a question	answer	{ query }	$0.0110/call
Full text of URLs	contents	{ urls: [...] }	$0.002/URL + $0.001 → 1 URL $0.0030, 3 URLs $0.0070
Pages like a given URL	find-similar	{ url, numResults? }	$0.0110/call
Recent news	search + category: "news"	–	$0.0110/call
Academic papers	search + category: "research paper"	–	$0.0110/call
Company info	search + category: "company"	–	$0.0110/call

contents bills per URL, so batching URLs into ONE call is markedly cheaper than one call each: 3 URLs together cost $0.0070, but three separate calls cost $0.0090 — you pay the flat fee three times instead of once.

Valid category values for search: "news", "research paper", "company", "tweet", "github", "pdf".

Python SDK Instructions

1. Initialize (Python SDK)

from blockrun_llm import setup_agent_wallet

chain = open(os.path.expanduser("~/.blockrun/.chain")).read().strip() if os.path.exists(os.path.expanduser("~/.blockrun/.chain")) else "base"
if chain == "solana":
    from blockrun_llm import setup_agent_solana_wallet
    client = setup_agent_solana_wallet()
else:
    from blockrun_llm import setup_agent_wallet
    client = setup_agent_wallet()

2. Search — Find Relevant URLs

# Basic search
result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/search", {
    "query": "AI agent frameworks 2025",
    "numResults": 10,
})
for r in result.get("results", []):
    print(f"{r['title']} — {r['url']}")

# Filter by category
result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/search", {
    "query": "transformer architecture improvements",
    "numResults": 10,
    "category": "research paper",
})

# Restrict to specific domains
result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/search", {
    "query": "prediction market regulation",
    "numResults": 10,
    "includeDomains": ["reuters.com", "bloomberg.com", "wsj.com"],
})

Categories: "news", "research paper", "company", "tweet", "github", "pdf"

3. Answer — Cited, Grounded Response

Use when the user asks a factual question and needs reliable sources (not Claude's training data).

result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/answer", {
    "query": "What is the current market cap of Polymarket?",
})
print(result.get("answer", ""))
for c in result.get("citations", []):
    print(f"  [{c.get('title')}] {c.get('url')}")

4. Contents — Fetch URL Text

Use when you have URLs and need their full text for LLM context (scraping without a browser).

urls = [
    "https://example.com/article-1",
    "https://example.com/article-2",
]
result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/contents", {
    "urls": urls,
})
for item in result.get("results", []):
    print(f"=== {item['url']} ===")
    print(item.get("text", "")[:500])

Up to 100 URLs per call. Returns Markdown-ready text.

5. Similar — Find Related Pages

Use to discover competitors, related research, or sites with similar content.

result = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/find-similar", {
    "url": "https://polymarket.com",
    "numResults": 10,
})
for r in result.get("results", []):
    print(f"{r['title']} — {r['url']}")

Common Research Workflows

Competitor discovery:

# 1. Find similar companies
similar = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/find-similar", {"url": "https://target-company.com", "numResults": 15})
urls = [r["url"] for r in similar.get("results", [])]

# 2. Fetch their about pages
contents = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/contents", {"urls": urls[:10]})

Research synthesis:

# 1. Find papers
papers = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/search", {
    "query": "your topic",
    "category": "research paper",
    "numResults": 20,
})

# 2. Get answer with citations
answer = client._request_with_payment_raw("/v1/exa/answer", {
    "query": "What are the key findings on your topic?",
})

When to Use Exa vs client.search()

Use blockrun_exa / _request_with_payment_raw	Use client.search()
Finding specific URLs and fetching content	Getting a summarized answer with citations
Semantic similarity search	Web + news combined
Academic paper discovery	Cheaper per call for simple lookups
Domain-filtered research	Already returns a SearchResult object

Requirements

• BlockRun SDK: pip install blockrun-llm
• USDC wallet funded (see client.get_balance())
• _request_with_payment_raw is the Python SDK entry point for Exa (no dedicated method yet)