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Exa connects with an API key from your Exa dashboard. It covers three surfaces: search, page extraction, and asynchronous agent runs for deep research and list building. This is your own Exa account, billed to your key. It is separate from the web search built into chat, which needs no connection.

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What you can do

Actions - search the web, read pages you already have URLs for, start an agent run, read an agent run. Triggers - none. Use it through the assistant in chat or as an action node in an automation.

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Get your credential

1

Open your Exa dashboard

Sign in at dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys.
2

Create an API key

Create a key and copy it. The same page shows your usage and remaining balance.

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Connect

1

Open Integrations

In arg.ai, go to Settings → Integrations and click Connect on Exa.
2

Paste the key

Enter your API key in the API key field.
3

Save

arg.ai checks the key against Exa without spending a search, then connects it.

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Use it

  • In chat: “Search for recent papers on retrieval evaluation and summarize the three most cited.”
  • In an automation: add an Exa action node to search, then chain a page read over the URLs it returned.

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How much content comes back

Search and page reads share one content setting, because Exa prices and sizes each differently:
  • highlights (the default for search) returns the excerpts relevant to your query - the right choice for agent loops, since it answers the question without flooding the context window.
  • text returns the whole page as markdown. Cap it with text_max_characters for deep reading.
  • summary returns a generated précis, optionally answering a summary_query.
  • none returns links and metadata only.
Set max_age_hours to control freshness: 0 always fetches the page live, -1 never does.

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Agent runs are asynchronous

Start an agent run returns a run id straight away - the research itself takes anywhere from seconds to minutes depending on the effort tier. Read it back by id with Read an agent run; once it reports completed, the same read carries the text answer, the structured output (when you supplied an output_schema), and the grounding citations.