exa-web-search-free

What This Skill Does

The exa-web-search-free skill provides OpenClaw users with powerful, neural-based search capabilities integrated directly into the agent workflow. Unlike standard keyword-based search engines, this skill utilizes the Exa MCP server to perform semantic searches across the web, software repositories, and corporate databases. It is designed to retrieve highly relevant context, such as current news, documentation, or company intelligence, without requiring the user to manage individual API keys. By leveraging the underlying Exa infrastructure, it offers specialized tools for general web navigation, code-specific discovery on platforms like GitHub, and targeted company research.

Installation

To integrate this skill, ensure that the mcporter utility is available in your environment. First, verify if the skill is currently configured by running mcporter list exa. If the output does not contain the Exa server, execute mcporter config add exa https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp to initialize the standard toolset. For power users needing advanced functionality—such as deep research agents, crawl capabilities, or professional profile lookups—you can expand your configuration by replacing the standard server with the full Exa-MCP endpoint via: mcporter config add exa-full "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp?tools=web_search_exa,web_search_advanced_exa,get_code_context_exa,deep_search_exa,crawling_exa,company_research_exa,people_search_exa,deep_researcher_start,deep_researcher_check".

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for developers, researchers, and business analysts. Developers can use it to fetch real-time code examples or documentation when debugging complex frameworks like React or Node.js. Business professionals can perform rapid due diligence on companies, extracting the latest news and organizational milestones. Researchers can leverage the 'deep search' functionality to perform comprehensive analysis on niche topics, reducing the time spent manually filtering through low-quality search engine results.

Example Prompts

1. "Search for the latest implementation patterns for serverless functions in AWS and provide code examples from GitHub."
2. "Perform a company research analysis on Anthropic; summarize their recent major announcements and growth milestones."
3. "Find the most recent updates and breaking news regarding the state of LLM safety research from the last month."

Tips & Limitations

To optimize your results, use the type parameter; set this to "fast" for quick lookups or "deep" for complex, multi-faceted research queries. When searching for code, adjust the tokensNum parameter: use lower values (around 1000) for highly focused snippets and higher values (5000+) to get broader context from technical documentation. Be aware that while this skill is "free," it relies on the availability of the Exa MCP server; maintain a stable network connection to ensure consistent performance. Avoid excessive automated requests in a short timeframe to maintain optimal response times.